To Walk in Shadow
by P.H. Wise
Summary: In which Taylor is a different sort of human altogether. After her initial forays into heroism don't go as planned, Taylor Hebert sets out on another path. But as she and her friends soon discover: all roads lead to Amber. (A Worm/Chronicles of Amber crossover.)
1. 1,1 - Pareidolia

_"Few people can say of themselves that they are free of the belief that this world which they see around them is in reality the work of their own imagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then?"_

 **To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

I dreamed I was descending a great spiral stairway fit for a palace, its every step a work of beauty, the visible side of each one carved with intricate designs. Above me was darkness; below me was darkness interrupted by a lantern's glow every forty feet. There was no guard rail, and the wall showed that the place was a natural cavern despite the artistry of the stair. The only sound was the sound of my own footsteps and the beating of my heart; the air was cool, crisp, and clean, and I don't know how long it took to reach the bottom, but it felt like hours.

Lanterns and torches. Fire that burned and did not consume. Pools of light between shadows, and the sound of footsteps on the stairs down into infinity.

I don't know what made me choose one tunnel over the other when I got to the bottom, but it seemed the proper way. After a few minutes of walking I turned into the seventh side passage and walked until I faced a great, dark, metal-bound door that stood ajar, and a faint light glimmered in the darkness beyond it.

I crossed the threshold and entered into a vast cavern with a floor black as pitch and smooth as glass, and when I set my foot to it, I kept traction without difficulty. And within that cavern, I found the light's source, for upon the floor was carved what seemed at first to be a single intertwined curve, luminescent and glowing and shimmering like cold fire, but even as I looked the image of the thing upon the floor expanded, rippling outward in every direction until it covered almost the whole of the black cavern floor, at least a hundred and fifty yards from one side to the other. But though it might deceive the eye, the pattern never changed. New aspects I had not seen before might make themselves known, but they had been there all the while.

I walked to the far side and images flashed in my mind: I saw a city at a mountain's peak unlike any city I had ever seen and like every city I had ever seen; I saw a deep blue, almost nighttime sky with golden sun that stood at high noon; I saw an ocean so deeply blue it was nearly purple and an enormous grey tower that rose up from the water some miles out to sea; I saw a black road that stretched from the mountain to a black citadel with every universe between.

I set foot on the edge of the Pattern, and a shower of blue-white sparks rose up beneath my foot. There was an almost electric shock and a thrumming in the air, and it took an effort of will to take a second step. As I took that second step forward, I awoke.

I was lying in my bed at home. It was hot, and I had been sweating, and even the thin sheets I slept beneath seemed suffocating. I kicked them off and sat up, and when I blinked I could almost still see that strange pattern in the darkness behind my eyelids.

The dreams were coming more often, now, and I don't know what they meant, or even if they meant anything at all. I had the dreams before things had gotten really bad at school, but they'd always been more vague, more tentative. The dreams have been coming more often since the locker: Since I woke up in the hospital.

There are other worlds: parallel realities. That's something every child on Earth Bet knows, but this felt different. It wasn't something I could explain in words; the best I could put it was to call it a certainty of fact, an absolute knowledge of truth that gave that strange intertwined curve a solidity that even the waking world seemed to lack, but that was too definite. I didn't know. It wasn't knowledge. It was like trying to describe the the reflection of an absolute truth, or comparing an impression left in the mud to the thing that made it.

Something dark was stirring in the Shadows. I could almost see them out of the corner of my eye: a pair of vast living things, each one larger than an entire planet, moving and shifting and intertwining across a thousand Shadows as they glided their way through the universe, innumerable shards falling off them like seeds cast to the wind, like a vast cloud of cosmic dust that could choke whole galaxies, but when I turned my head to look they were gone, and I scolded myself for daydreaming and watching too many horror movies.

Someone was looking for me. I don't know how I knew that, but I knew. I saw footsteps on the pattern, and I heard images forged from alien sounds, and by morning I'd almost convinced myself that it was all in my head.

It was all in my head.

My clock told me that it was still half an hour before my normal wakeup time, but I didn't feel tired anymore.

I needed some water.

I went downstairs to the kitchen, filled a glass and drank my fill, and as I set the glass back down I squeezed it, taking some small comfort in its solidity, its reality.

The glass shattered in my hand, and I jumped.

It wasn't bad. I only had a few small scratches and one long shallow cut across my palm. After I'd cleaned up the mess and bandaged my hand, the pain faded, and by the time I left for my run, I'd almost forgotten about it entirely. By the time I got back home and took my shower, the scab looked old, and the tissue around it was slightly swollen and tender, like days-old wound.

I stared at my hand for a long moment as I made the connections in my head. Was it possible…? I ended the thought before it could finish, but I couldn't quite suppress the stirring in my heart that accompanied it.

I finished my shower, dried my hair and dressed, and I barely heard my Dad's sleepy good morning from out in the hall as he shuffled down the stairs to make breakfast. "...morning, Taylor," he mumbled.

I didn't answer him. Instead, I went to the heaviest thing I could think of in my room - my desk - bent down, took hold of it with both hands, and lifted.

The desk came up easily, like it was made of cheap particle board and not solid wood. It was awkward and hard to keep my balance while I was holding it, but I could do it.

That same hope from earlier came back ten times as strong, and for the first time in years, a thrill of joy went through me, and I grinned so wide that it hurt.

My name is Taylor Hebert, and I have super powers. That was how it started.

I spent weeks making a costume, I ran to get in shape, and I threw myself into training and learning how to fight. Dad seemed relieved and concerned both to see me taking classes at the local dojo, but I learned quickly. I had a natural talent for it. And if Emma, Sophia, and Madison continued to make my life a living hell at school, it only made me want to train twice as hard, it only to prove that they were wrong, that I really was worth something.

I was going to be a hero.

It went wrong.

You've probably heard some variation of the story before. My life is reflected through a thousand Shadows, like two mirrors facing each other, and I honestly couldn't tell you if I'm the reflected or just another reflection.

One cool April night, I overheard something I couldn't ignore, uttered by an opponent I couldn't match. I challenged the dragon.

I lost.

There was fire, and pain, and then darkness.

Darkness.

 _...darkness_.

The darkness was everywhere and everything, like the starless night at the end of the universe, and a low thrumming slowly rose up in me that I became aware of only by degrees. Presently the darkness lightened into something like the darkness behind closed eyelids, and I became aware of myself in agony; then awareness took a back-seat to sensation, and a pain far more real than me became my world.

It started to end after what felt like most of eternity. The ocean of pain receded slowly, like an outgoing tide, still cresting in waves but each wave a little less than the last.

I opened my eyes.

Nothing made sense. The world I saw was a misshapen place of giants and impossible angles and colors that didn't exist, and I blinked. The world seemed to distort, and all was insubstantial as a shadow, and I blinked, and I blinked and I blinked until the world made sense and my surroundings were explicable again, and I became aware of myself lying in a hospital bed covered in bandages.

For a moment I couldn't remember who I was or why I was here. My name was on the tip of my tongue, but it didn't want to come.

Then the door opened, and the light was almost blinding, and a man came through. He was tall and gangling, dark haired but balding, his green eyes showing through his thick glasses. He looked tired and careworn, his clothes were rumpled, and something about him seemed familiar.

He took in a sharp breath when he saw me. "Taylor," he breathed.

Taylor. That was my name. That was who I was. I remembered Taylor. I didn't remember the man yet, but my voice seemed to speak without me, an awful, wet, cracked thing, more a husk of a voice than a voice itself: "Hi, Dad," I said.

He smiled, and it hurt to see, and a hundred memories came with it. He moved as if to hug me, but he drew up short, maybe when he remembered my bandages. "Do you remember what happened?" he asked.

I stared down at my bandage-covered hands, felt the throb of pain beneath. It hurt every time my heart beat, and it hurt everywhere. What had happened?

Fire. A tattooed man in a metal mask. Pain. Burning. A look of utter contempt. A cruel smile to go with cruel mercy.

"Lung," I whispered.

Dad shuddered and nodded. "They found you in ABB territory, Taylor," he said.

"They?" I asked.

"Armsmaster," Dad amended. "He said you'd been in a fight." He swallowed, and once again his expression hurt to see. "Taylor, why didn't you tell me?"

Guilt welled up first, and then not-tears, and it hurt to even try to cry, even though no tears came. "I'm sorry, Dad," I told him with my broken voice.

He smiled sadly. "The important thing is that you're alive," he said, and sat down next to my bed. I took his hand and squeezed, and it hurt, but so did everything.

For a little while, neither of us spoke. Then Dad asked, "What's your power?"

"I'm a Brute," I said. My whole body itched beneath the bandages, but I didn't scratch. "I'm strong, fast, tough, and I've always healed fast."

He nodded. "True," he agreed. "... can you heal from this?"

I didn't know, and I said so.

"I'm trying to get you on the list for Panacea," Dad said.

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. Then a nurse came in and saw that I was awake, and things got complicated. First the nurse had questions, and then the doctor, and then the Protectorate, and as I lay there feeling the pain throbbing through my body, I thought of Lung and his fire, of the cruelty in his eyes when he told me that my ruined body was going to serve as an example to anyone who dared to stand against him who proved not worth his time, and something hard and bitter rose within my heart. I didn't know how exactly, but I swore then and there that I would find a way to kill him.

* * *

Panacea did not come that night, nor the next day, but in the morning I hurt a little less. I didn't know if I was recovering or if I was just getting used to the pain, but I could sit up. I looked for a mirror and didn't find one, and maybe it was just as well. Dad came in smelling faintly of soap; he had showered but hadn't slept, and the dark circles beneath his eyes were worse.

I didn't like the pity I saw in his expression when he looked at me. What I could see of my skin was a burned ruin; I didn't have any hair, nor eyelashes, probably not eyebrows either. My imagination treated me to an image of the skin of my face melting like wax in Lung's fire, and I shuddered.

Dad fell asleep some time after noon. I tried to watch television for a while, and I learned that I was at Brockton Bay General Hospital.

I'd been naked when they brought me in, my costume burned to ashes, but there wasn't anything to see. I wouldn't have to worry about being plain anymore. Emma didn't have to tell me how ugly I was now, and even if I got into the best shape of my life, no boy would call me even a backhanded word like 'butterface.'

I was a burn victim.

I was very thirsty, but they wouldn't let me drink anything yet. After my third unit of saline and a course of antibiotics, I fell asleep.

Panacea still did not come.

I tried to be understanding. I told myself that she had a lot of people to get to, that she couldn't drop everything to prioritize a burn victim who wasn't in danger of dying if the doctors could stave off infection.

The third day, the pain was less, and I got up and walked to the bathroom to look myself in the mirror.

It was bad. My flesh was raw and red beneath the bandages everywhere it wasn't covered in blisters, and one eye looked cloudy, and the tip of my nose was gone. I looked like a burned corpse that hadn't had the decency to stop moving, and I couldn't cry: my tear ducts had been damaged.

The fourth day dawned, and the pain was still less. Dad went to work, and when he came back to the hospital that evening he told me that everyone was pulling for me.

I didn't answer him.

The doctors and nurses started talking in hushed whispers that night, and on the morning of the fifth day, Armsmaster came through the door into my hospital room, his armor bright and gleaming, and a sense of unreality came over me.

Was this real? Was he? Was I? In my sterile, brightly lit hospital room, I felt I was surrounded by shadows, as though the walls of existence night at any moment for apart and leave me to spiral into the empty nothing at the end of time: a perfected principle of consumption, gnawing and empty.

Armsmaster was saying something, concern visible on the part of his face that showed beneath the visor. "... you all right, Ms. Hebert?"

I decided that it didn't matter at the moment if the whole universe was imaginary, and I could save my existential crisis for another time. "I'm fine," I said.

"You look better," he said, and for a moment I thought he was joking.

"What?"

"Your burns are healing quickly," he clarified, and things clicked into place. The Protectorate thought I was parahuman. He was giving me the chance to tell him about it if I wanted to, or we could both pretend that neither of us knew what was obviously going on.

"I've always healed fast," I said.

He nodded. "Ordinarily, I'd tell you how dangerous it is to do what you've been doing alone, but I think you understand that now. If you need help, support, assistance, training, the Wards are here for you."

I didn't answer for a long moment.

Help sounded good. Support, assistance, training. I didn't much like the thought of joining a group of teen superheroes, since that sounded like highschool but worse, but the rest…

It came to one thing: even if it was stupid, even if it was hopeless, I was going to make that dragon answer for what he'd done to me. And if I was going to kill Lung, I doubted I could do it as a Ward.

"I'll think about it," I told him.

We both knew I was lying.

* * *

Panacea never came, and I never learned why. Maybe she didn't care. Maybe she was busy. Maybe she never even heard that Dad had tried to get me on the list for healing during her volunteer hours. Whatever the reason, she never came, but by the end of the eighth day, I was far enough along towards recovery that I was starting to think maybe I could get better without her, and the pity in Dad's eyes when he looked at me had been replaced with hope.

Dad took me home on April 18th, and when I took off the bandages, I was startled to realize that I recognized the face in the mirror: it was mine. Blistered still and still burned in places, but healthy pink flesh showed through, and all the flaws somehow weren't so flawed anymore.

I stared, trying to see exactly what had changed. My thin lips and wide mouth were still there, but they fit my face now in a way they hadn't before. I was still tall and skinny, but the awkward coltishness was gone, and now I was simply myself. My hair was a thick stubble on my otherwise bald head. My nose, my jaw, my cheekbones, all of it fit and seemed altogether right and natural, and there were no scars. Had the fire transfigured me somehow? Yet if it had, it had not remade me into some ethereal beauty nor haunting vision. I was me, but somehow moreso.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror, and I burst into tears.


	2. 1,2 - Pareidolia

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

1.2 - Pareidolia

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

There are certain tasks in life that are difficult to begin. They need a lot more preparation than others. For the average teenage girl, those tasks might include major homework assignments, learning the correct application of makeup to emphasize your face's positives while minimizing the negatives, and building a flossing habit like the dentist insists you should.

For me, it was plotting the murder of a local parahuman gang leader.

Where do you even start?

I'd never plotted a murder before, but I was dedicated to the endeavour, and I liked to think that enthusiasm helped.

Problem 1: Lung possesses parahuman powers of strength, pyrokinesis and regeneration that grow stronger the longer a fight progresses.

Problem 2: I wasn't a match for him. I was strong and fast; I'd never actually pushed myself to find out what it would take to exhaust me, but a normal exercise routine didn't; and I could heal way faster than a normal person. For all that, in any fight against Lung that went on for more than thirty seconds or so - that was how long it had taken him to grow past me in our battle - I was in the same position against him as a normal girl.

Helpless.

Therefore, any attempt I made on Lung's life had to be finished within thirty seconds. Ideally, death would be instantaneous. I could think of a few ways to do that, but none of them were things I was capable of. Sniper. Poison. Bomb. Tinker device. Maybe Armsmaster or some other Tinker could develop a counteragent that would nullify Lung's regeneration and then I could just stab him, but I wasn't a Tinker, I had only the most rudimentary understanding of firearms, building a bomb would probably just get me dead by accident, and I was pretty sure that googling things like 'how to make deadly neurotoxin' wouldn't accomplish much beyond getting me on an FBI watchlist.

The more I thought about it, the more revenge against the dragon seemed like something I had to plan for in the long-term. I needed resources and training that I didn't have, and back then I didn't have the ability to put things in perspective. Revenge is no less an art than painting, requiring no less devotion from its adherents, and I had only just picked up my brush for the first time. I was fifteen years old, and while teenagers are many things, they tend not to be patient long-term planners.

I was stuck, and I hated the sense of helplessness that knowledge brought with it almost as much as I hated Lung.

I'd lost weight while I was in the hospital again, and I knew I was getting dangerously skinny - I still had that half-starved skeletal look of the chronically ill - and I still wanted to find out just how far I could go before I actually got tired, so I threw myself into physical training with a vengeance.

My first day at the gym I got worried looks from everyone who saw me, and when I finished my two hour long workout, I found that I felt good. I wasn't sore, I didn't feel tired; I felt like I could go for hours more.

I went running, then. I wasn't sprinting, just moving at an easy run, losing myself in the motion of my body as the streets went by around me. I stopped for water, once, but otherwise I kept going until sunset. Then, finding myself in a trash-strewn park in a poorly maintained section of the Docks, I came to a halt at the top of a small, horse-shoe shaped declivity that lead down to a small creek. Trash and other debris had mostly choked it off, but I could still hear the burbling murmur of the water, and dogs were barking somewhere in the distance.

Later in the evenings I went to my self defense courses, and there, too, I got worried looks and instruction not to push myself too hard. Mostly, though, I think my teachers were just happy to see me back.

I came back to that trash-strewn park several times over the next few days, always at the end of my runs, and on the fourth day, the day before I was due to go back to school, I lingered there for a longer time, trying to imagine what it had looked like before years of neglect had choked the creek, rusted the play structure, and turned the field into less a grassy field and more a muddy collection of refuse.

After a time I stood up and walked back along an overgrown concrete path with stubborn weeds growing through the cracks and made my way toward the park entrance. The barking of dogs grew louder. Someone came into view down at the street end of the path, at the entrance to the park, and I looked toward the source of movement.

A girl. My age, or maybe a little older, and vaguely familiar. She had a square, blunt-featured face, like she had been carved from stone as some sculptor's rough draft and not from flesh. She had auburn hair and a muscular build, and she was walking a trio of dogs. They barked occasionally, but mostly they just walked at her side or just behind her. Two were mutts; the third was a Rottweiler.

I nodded to the girl as she approached. She looked at me a moment and nodded back.

"Can I pet your dogs?" I asked.

She glanced down at them, then back at me. "No," she said.

I let it go at that. "Okay," I said.

She seemed to relax slightly. Then she walked on, and her dogs followed.

 _The Pattern from my dreams behind my eyes, in the darkness between blinks. Grass around me, and the path clear and clean, the spring air pleasantly cool and scented with wild flowers. The creek burbles softly, no longer choked with trash, and the gloom seems lifted in the street…_

That sense of unreality that had haunted me at the hospital came crashing back over me like a surging tide. The dogs began to bark again, and whine, and made frightened noises. I stared at my altered surroundings, and the girl I'd seen shouted a command to quiet her panicking dogs.

 _ **Pattern**._

 _Children playing on the playground. The see-saw goes up and down. A little boy calls out, "Mommy, watch this!" and I remember the taste of apples. A little girl with curly black hair in denim overalls and a long sleeved shirt races through the grass after a black cocker spaniel that lets out a joyful bark as they romp..._

It was gone. The park was a dump again. Empty again. The docks a gloomy slum around it, and the sound of the creek subsided to a choked off distant thing.

I turned and stared at the auburn-haired girl with her dogs, and she stared at me in turn.

Her eyes narrowed. "Did you do that?" she asked.

So she'd seen it, too. I hadn't been hallucinating? Or maybe we both had the same hallucination. Had I done it? I didn't think so. I shook my head. "Did you?" I asked.

"No," she said.

Neither of us said anything after that.

* * *

I didn't tell Dad about what happened at the park. Mostly that was because I had no idea what had happened myself, and I was pretty sure that explaining it to him would be awkward and uncomfortable. When I came in late, he looked like he wanted to say something, and I gave him a chance to say it, but he didn't. Probably it would have been awkward and uncomfortable.

In the morning, I got up to my alarm clock and felt still better than I had when I'd gone to bed. I did my morning ablutions, and as I was brushing my teeth I noticed that my body didn't look quite so gaunt as it had when I'd gotten out of the hospital almost a week before. I'd even put on some muscle, and I was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to work that quickly.

My hair was still very, very short despite having almost seventeen days to regrow, and it was starting to look like a buzz cut. I was a little surprised that the buzz-cut look didn't look bad on me, though I was pretty sure Emma was going to make fun of it anyway.

I was right.

I guess Emma needs some explanation.

Emma Barnes was my best friend when I was little. We grew up together, did almost everything together. We went to the same school, and there was hardly a summer weekend that went by without one of us sleeping over at the other's house. She was my sister in all but name. And then, one day, after Mom's accident and the funeral and everything, Emma apparently just decided that she hated me. She used every secret I'd ever told her against me, she insulted me and terrorized me, bullied me every day.

She didn't do it alone, either. She had help. Sophia Hess and Madison Clements completed the triumvirate that sought my ruin, and even if I can see now that the experience was valuable, especially in the way it made me cautious of trusting people I considered family, at the time all I could see was my own misery.

I won't bore you with the details of their petty torments. Suffice it to say, if they had put half as much effort into their schoolwork as they put into making me miserable, they would have been at the top of their class.

I ran across town to the library after school. There was a time when I would have taken the bus, but I hadn't found my limits yet, and I was determined to push for them as much as I could. I wasn't particularly winded when I arrived, but I took a moment to center myself and control my breathing before I went in just the same.

I went to one of the computers, ignored the stares, and loaded up Parahumans Online.

Parahumans Online, or PHO, was the go-to internet site for discussion of all things parahuman. Heroes, villains, rogues, Endbringer attacks, it was all here, and it was a website I'd visited often when I was preparing to go out as a hero. I'd looked up all the known parahumans in Brockton Bay just so I wouldn't be surprised if I ran into them and so I'd have an idea of who I should run from and who I could engage. I'd also done a bunch of reading to try to figure out a name that hadn't already been taken.

At first I'd wanted to go with Power Girl, but that one was taken by an Alexandria package with a corporate sponsorship, and those people aren't shy about suing. Then I thought maybe I could call myself Jewel, but that was taken three times over: there were heroines named Jewel in Houston and Baltimore, and there was a villain with the name in Poughkeepsie who claimed to draw her powers from a 'magic jewel' that PHO was pretty sure was made of plastic.

The other names I'd wanted hadn't fared any better.

There was an old thread discussing the night of my fight with Lung, but something in me wanted to scream at the thought of actually reading it, so I passed it over. Another thread detailed how Lung's gang - the ABB - had added a Tinker named Bakuda to their ranks and were making a major push into previously unclaimed territory in the Docks. Supposedly, he was trying to flush out some small time villain gang called the Undersiders who had pissed him off.

That was the punchline to my confrontation with the dragon, of course. I'd heard him talking about killing kids and had gone to stop him. Naturally, the kids in question turned out to be a bunch of teen supervillains, because that's just how my life goes.

I still didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe that was the sign of a good joke.

I looked up the Undersiders, then, and there wasn't much info to find. Names associated with the group: Tattletale, Grue, (Unknown), Hellhound. I followed the links to each name in turn.

Tattletale's article on the wiki was almost entirely bare. Just a blurry photo and a note that she wore a lavender costume. Grue turned up more: he'd been active for at least three years but had never done anything beyond the occasional robbery or a stint as an enforcer. His power was… some kind of darkness creation.

When I brought up the link for Hellhound's article, my jaw dropped open slightly and I stared at the photo accompanying the article.

She was the auburn-haired girl I'd met in the park. The one who had seen it, too, when the world had gone weird.

I sat there for a long while trying to decide what to do, or if I should do anything at all. She had seen it, too. Did that make it real? What, exactly, had happened in that park? I went over it in my mind again and again, but I just couldn't seem to decide if satisfying my curiosity about that weird possible shared hallucination, possible weird shaker effect was worth the risk of following up on it.

When I left the library, I still hadn't.


	3. 1,3 - Pareidolia

**To Walk in Shadow**  
(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

1.3 - Pareidolia

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

That night, I dreamed that a pale, sunken-eyed woman with long, spider-like fingers crouched upon my chest, breathing in a sort of mist that came out of me every time I exhaled. She had black eyes with no pupils, and a chill passed through my body as I realized that I couldn't move.

"Oh, Taylor," she said with Emma's voice, and when she spoke I saw that her teeth - all of her teeth - were delicately pointed. "Don't you see that this is all you're good for? I don't know why you even bother going to school. Honestly, you should just kill yourself and get it over with."

Lung stepped out of the shadows of my closet, his metal mask fixed in an expression of contempt that was echoed by his body language. "Your friend is correct," he said. "You should listen to her. A useless child, a useless hero; you couldn't be bothered to give me a fight worth mentioning. And then you had the temerity to heal from what should have been a permanent reminder of your failure?"

"Shut up," I snapped at him.

"What are you going to do about it, Taylor?" the thing with Emma's voice asked. "Cry yourself to sleep for a week?"

Tears stung in my eyes. I threw myself against whatever power held me there, helpless, paralyzed, unable to meaningfully contribute to my own destiny. For all my efforts, I achieved not even the tiniest twitch of my big toe.

"There is an upside to your speedy recovery," Lung mused. "It means I get to burn you again. And again. And again. As often as necessary. Until you realize..."

The thing with Emma's voice joined in, then, speaking in unison with Lung: "That you're worthless."

I writhed beneath the paralysis, my flesh crawling at the creature's touch, at her weight on my chest, the stink of her hot breath upon my face, helpless anger and terror building and building until it felt like a furnace in my chest, like fire in my veins. "Shut up!" I howled.

They laughed, and everything spun away. I saw a flash of Lung's face, of Emma, Sophia and Madison surrounding me in the hallway at school, of an endless palatial hall filled with mirrors of every description, a knife at my throat, pain, the heat of blood but not the texture nor the liquid feel, the Pattern carved into a cavern floor like polished black glass, then darkness, then silence.

I woke.

Later, after I'd collected myself, I went about my morning routine and silently willed the dream to retreat into the fog of memory the way dreams are supposed to.

I took a few breaths, putting my hand against the mirror in the bathroom to steady myself. myself and there beheld my changed yet unchanged countenance once again: the contours of my cheekbones, the curve of my lips, the shape of my nose, the green of my eyes all recognizable as belonging to me yet every feature seeming to fit together now in a way it never did before my recovery, each piece an inevitable expression of the whole.

Then there was what had happened in the park. I still wasn't sure what exactly that had been, but things were getting weird. Or they had always been weird and I just hadn't noticed. And the girl from the park where the world had gone strange, and who had noticed the strange with me, was the villain Hellhound.

Her wiki entry had been the most complete of the Undersiders. She hadn't made any effort to hide her identity, had been homeless and living on the street for most of her villainous career just moving on when the police or a cape came after her. The picture in her article's sidebar had showed her clearly enough, unmasked, riding on the back of a monstrous hell-dog. She could turn any ordinary dog into a similar creature, all muscle, bone, fang and claw. I remembered also the red box near the bottom of her wiki page, which read: "Rachel Lindt has a public identity, but is known to be particularly hostile, antisocial and violent. If recognized, do not approach or provoke. Leave the area and notify authorities as to her last known location."

It sounded like excellent advice. I was about to ignore it.

It wasn't that I wanted to speak to her specifically, and I had no intention of becoming a villain, but according to PHO, Lung was after the Undersiders, was still actively searching for them; more relevant to me, the Undersiders had been the 'children' I'd risked my life for, that I had been burned alive to protect.

They owed me, and though I wasn't yet sure how to collect on that debt, the fact that Lung was still after them sent my thoughts down certain ponderous pathways toward ideas I'd never heretofore entertained, likely never would have if things had gone differently.

By the time I was ready to act April had all but slipped away. I was back in my routine, but I had no desire for things to continue the way they had. At the library after school once more, I was halfway into writing a post on the PHO 'connections' board - the place where rescued damsels left their contact information for their dashing heroes, where conventions and fan gatherings were organized and where people posted job offers to capes and the cape-obsessed - to try to contact one or more of the Undersiders when I noticed a post near the bottom of the first page, the title of which immediately caught my attention. I clicked on it and the library computer loaded the page after a moment's delay.

 **Subject:** Good Thing You Can Heal

Owe you one. Would like to repay the favor. Meet?

Send a message,

Tt.

I deleted the message I'd been working on and thought about how I would reply. It was April 30, and though I didn't see it in those terms at the time, I was going to try to extort a group of supervillains into serving my agenda. Naturally, someone wound up trying to kill me.

That was just the kind of month it had been.

* * *

The sun had set, but there was still a gleaming in the west above the mountains, twilight darkening from blue into shades of purple into black as it crested the sky. Mercury had set; Venus lingered. The air had not yet taken on the night's chill.

I arrived at the overgrown park half expecting the Undersiders to be there waiting for me. They weren't - it was still half an hour before the time we'd agreed on - and I took the time to get a look at the meeting area and the approaches to it.

We were to meet at the old gazebo that overlooked the trash-choked creek. It had been a grand place in its heyday, the sort of place where weddings were done. The gazebo had been white, once, but time and weather had stripped much of the paint and dulled the rest. It was flanked by a pair of tuliptrees in full bloom, each one a riot of pink flowers over dark branches in lamp-post light with the old moon's last silver sliver low in the sky overhead. A mossy cobblestone path led off from the main concrete one and up to the gazebo, and someone had strewn a dozen empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer along it. There was a trashcan off to the side. It was full, and trash had been piled up around it in a large mound.

Any approach through the creek behind the gazebo would be a loud one, and I didn't think it likely that the Undersiders would come that way. I took up a position near the park's now disused public restroom. Used needles littered the ground near its water fountain, but no one was inside. The lamps nearby were dead, and I stood in the building's shadow, all but invisible there in the black hoodie, black pants, and cheap black mask I'd replaced my burned costume with, but with a good view of the obvious approaches to the gazebo.

Time passed slowly, and my eyes sought every shadow, every slightest noise, but aside from the crickets, the katydids, an owl, and the mosquitos, I was alone.

Five minutes before the time of the meeting, a black fog spread across the park, barely visible in the darkness except as a sense of deeper darkness moving toward the gazebo. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end even as I recognized it: Grue of the Undersiders with the power of darkness creation. The night-time insects grew silent as the dark fog, almost smoke, passed over them, and I lost sight of the gazebo in the murk.

The dark lifted all at once, and four human figures stood at the gazebo. The first was the girl I'd seen before - Hellhound - wearing the same clothes she'd had last time but with a cheap bulldog mask that would have done a great job of covering her face if it hadn't been resting on top of her head. She stood a little apart from the others, and three of her dogs prowled around the gazebo. The second was a tall male in motorcycle leathers with a helmet sculpted to look like a stylized skull. The third was a girl in a skintight outfit and domino mask. Outfit and mask alike looked black from this distance; her hair was a dark blonde, and it gleamed slightly in the lamp-light. I couldn't tell if the fourth was a boy or a girl from a distance, but he or she was dressed in renaissance-style clothing - leggings and a loose-fitting shirt. A venetian mask covered the face. They wore a silver coronet and a black ring on their left hand.

They seemed to talk among themselves for a little while, too far off for me to hear; I watched for another minute before I stepped out of the rest room's shadow and moved to join them, and my heart pounded as I went.

"And the human torch arrives," said the one in the renaissance-style clothes, whose voice identified him as a boy.

A flash of anger went through me at his words, and I clenched my fist. The dogs seemed to take note, and Hellhound's eyes became fixed on me. I let out a breath. I let my fist unclench.

"Shut up, Regent," the one in motorcycle leathers said. He had a very nice voice, deep and rich, and I found myself wondering what he looked like. He turned his head toward me. "Do you have a name that we can call you?"

I didn't. I'd never gotten around to deciding on a heroic name. "Let's just go with 'S' for now," I told him.

He nodded. "I'm Grue," he said, and offered his hand. I shook it, and his handshake was firm. He took off his helmet, then, revealing a startlingly handsome face. He had dark chocolate skin, shoulder length cornrows and a lantern jaw, and when he smiled it made him look like the teenager he was. "You can me Brian, though," he said.

"Tattletale," the girl in the skintight bodysuit introduced herself. She raised her mask to show me her face, then lowered it again. "Call me Lisa when I'm not in costume."

"Regent," said the boy in the venetian mask. He raised the mask and then set it back in place with a careless gesture. "Or Alec. Whichever. You already know Bitch." He indicated Hellhound; Hellhound - Bitch, whichever - didn't say anything but bared her teeth in what was definitely not a smile.

"I assume there's a reason you're showing me your faces and giving me names?" I asked. "I'm a little weirded out."

Brian and Lisa exchanged looks. "It's to put us on even footing," Brian explained.

The implications were immediately obvious: they knew who I was. I was glad for the mask and the dark: they couldn't see me go pale with the realization. "You know who I am," I said.

Lisa nodded. "Jane Doe admitted to Brockton Bay General Hospital on April 11 with severe second and third degree burns to 90% of her body. Identified with dental records as Taylor Hebert. Checked out of the hospital on April 18th. Returned to school at Winslow on the 25th with a buzz cut and a few bad blisters as the only thing to show for her immolation. You didn't exactly make it hard."

My cheeks colored. "I didn't think that anyone would be watching hospital admissions and checkout dates," I mumbled.

"Now you know better," Lisa said, and winked. Then she took a briefcase from where it had been set next to the bench in the gazebo and held it out to me.

I tilted my head. "What's this?" I asked.

"Open it," Lisa said.

I took it, set it down on the bench, opened it, and I tried not to gasp at the sight: I failed.

"Money," I breathed. It was more than I'd ever held in my hands in my life. Stacks of bills filled the briefcase, each tied with a paper band, each band with a number written on it in permanent marker. Thirty stacks. A thousand each. Thirty thousand dollars.

"Thirty grand," Lisa confirmed.

I closed the briefcase and stared hard at Lisa. "Why?"

"We owe you," Lisa said. "Our boss agrees, hence the briefcase. Don't get too excited, though. What's in there is only enough to cover the cost of your two hospital stays."

Oh God. Dad had spent that much on me? I knew things were expensive without health insurance, but that much? My mind reeled. And a distant part of me noted that Lisa knew about the first hospital stay, too: the one after the locker incident.

"There's more if you're interested," she said casually. "You can take that as a gift and we'll call it even. Nothing more to us or to you. Or…"

Control of this conversation had gotten away from me. Maybe I'd never had it in the first place. I tried to think of some way to regain it, but I just drew a blank. "Or?" I asked faintly.

"You can join up as one of us and get another two thousand a month just for sticking together and staying active," Brian said, "plus a considerable bonus for every single job we pull."

"I didn't agree to that," Bitch said.

The others looked at her. "It's three to one, Bitch," Regent said.

Bitch glared at him.

"I'm not going to be a villain," I said, and Alec seemed amused but didn't say anything.

Lisa raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What are your plans?"

'Murder Lung' was the very first thing that came to mind. I didn't say it outloud, but Lisa smirked. "You want revenge, right?" she asked. "You want to take down Lung?"

I glared at her. "I don't need help to do that," I lied.

She laughed, and I had to force myself not to flinch. "Come on, S. Going after Lung on your own, without any help, is just an elaborate form of suicide. The boss has the kind of resources you would need. He can help to make that happen if that's what you want for joining up."

"I join your villain team, your boss helps me kill Lung?" I asked incredulously.

"You're already plotting murder," Lisa said. "You think they let heroes get away with that?"

I didn't have an answer. "Why me?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised how useful even a low-level brute can be," Brian said. "As long as you know your limits and play it smart, you can be a force of nature."

"If it helps," Lisa added, "we don't actually have any grand agenda. We're in this for fun and profit."

I didn't answer.

"This is a waste of time," Bitch said.

"At least come see the hideout," Lisa said. "I promise you'll like it, and we're going out on a limb trusting you that far."

"I'll see the hideout," I said with a sigh, and I felt like a sucker.

We left the park together. There was a van waiting parked on the side of the street about a block distant, and we piled into it with Brian driving. We were already in the bad part of the Docks, and we didn't have far to go. A few people were wandering on the streets: a homeless bag lady with a grocery card, a shirtless old man with his beard to his navel, a few others. The neighborhood around the park was bad, but this was worse, almost like a ghost town or a city abandoned post-disaster.

After five minutes of driving, we pulled up in front of a red brick factory with a massive sliding metal door. The building stretched for half a block and stood three stories high; a sign on the roof declared it, 'Redmond Welding.'

We piled out of the van and moved toward a small door on the side of the building. There was a noise I couldn't identify, not quite a gunshot, and something metal landed in front of the door.

That was when the explosions began.

It was louder than anything I'd ever heard before, and I could feel it in my chest. There was a bright flare, I clenched my eyes shut against a bloom of heat, and then I staggered backward. If we had been even a few feet closer, we would have all died in that blast.

The door and a large section of the building around it was on fire.

There was another crack, and then another. Something went sailing overhead and crashed through one of the factory's upper windows, and a plume of fire erupted in its wake.

Grenades. Someone was firing grenades at us. Incendiary grenades!

A mad sort of panic bubbled in the pit of my stomach. I caught sight of a woman in a metal gas-mask and large, opaque goggles standing on a neighboring building hefting a grenade launcher.

My jaw dropped open slightly. "Oh, fuck," I muttered.

We were penned in by fire on all sides. Dark smoke billowed around Grue, and Bitch's dogs had begun to grow and swell grotesquely. Another grenade hit the red brick factory, and when it exploded, it covered a huge swath of the building in ice. Another grenade went off with an eye-searing flash, and another chunk of the building was flash-converted to glass. The woman was laughing.

Then a man in a black bodysuit with a demonic mask with a leering, fanged, ear-to-ear grin appeared in the street. Then a shirtless, well muscled, tattooed man in blue jeans with a metal mask came up to join him with a dozen young men in tow, all of them in ABB colors.

Lung.

Oh God.

Lung held up a hand, and the woman on the roof ceased her bombardment. He walked to the edge of the circle of flames that surrounded us and held out a hand as if to test the heat of it. "Undersiders," he said in a deep, gravelly, commanding voice, and there was a certain satisfaction in his tone. "You should not have stolen from your betters. You shamed me in my place of power and escaped my righteous vengeance, but not for long. Contemplate your error as you die."

"Lung," I hissed aloud, hate and fear rising in me. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to run screaming. I needed to… I wasn't ready for this. I had to get away, and there was nowhere to run.

He regarded me, then, and he seemed to recognize me. "You," he said. "I remember you. Have you recovered so quickly? No matter. You won't get another chance to disappoint me in battle." He looked to the woman on the roof. "Bakuda," he called, "kill them."

Grue's darkness spread to cover us, and I couldn't see the grenade I knew was coming. The heat of the fire was less inside that darkness, the sound of its roar muted somehow, and I was about to try running through it for all that it hurt even to be near it. The heat was impossible, and even breathing was painful, but we were all pressed as near to the fire as we could, each about to sprint through and nevermind if the attempt killed us.

The grenade landed in the center of the ring of fire. There was a flash of light even through Grue's darkness, and then the darkness was gone. Sound died away. Heat died away.

There was a hole in the world.

It hung there in the night, suspended a foot above the ground, expanding rapidly, a point of absolute blackness beyond any darkness surrounded by a whirling maelstrom of energy and debris. It swept away the sidewalk, parts of the building, and I found myself falling toward it with the Undersiders and Bitch's dogs, pulled as if by inexorable force of gravity toward that howling vortex.

I screamed. I grasped at the sidewalk in vain. And as I moved, I tried to do… something. I couldn't quite grasp what it was, but I wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere that didn't include whatever the hell Bakuda had done that I knew for a fact was going to kill me and the Undersiders alike. Time seemed to slow. Distance stretched. I was being crushed. I was certain that I was about to be ground into so much bloody meat.

All of us were screaming. Regent had lost his mask, and his eyes were wide. I kept trying to do… whatever I was doing, kept pushing at I knew not what, and then, just as we fell into that endless void, my eyes met Regent's, and…

I don't know how to describe it except to say that it felt like someone bumped my metaphysical elbow, and something just clicked.

A second later, we all landed with a splash in water three feet deep. Lung, Bakuda, Oni Lee, and the ABB were gone. The fire was gone. The howling void was gone. I spluttered and rose to my feet, thoroughly soaked and miserable but glad to be alive.

It was daytime. The sun was shining through thin clouds giving a hazy feel to the light. The street was flooded. There was pavement beneath the water. A flooded but otherwise undamaged building stood nearby with a sign on the roof that read, 'Redmond Welding.'

I looked around in shock. It wasn't just this street: as far as I could see, all the streets were flooded.

Bitch stared about wildly, her mask floating in the water nearby. Her dogs, grown to the size of horses, whined uncertainly.

"What the hell was that?" Grue asked. "Where are we?"

Tattletale studied our surroundings. "... I don't think we've moved," she said after a moment.

"That's impossible," Grue said. "Everything's…" he trailed off as he recognized the now flood-damaged but otherwise conspicuously not destroyed red brick hideout nearby. "Tattletale?" he asked.

The boardwalk was missing. The docks were flooded. People moved about in the water here and there but didn't seem surprised by it. This was something they'd gotten used to.

"I think we're exactly where we were before," Tattletale said in a faint voice, gesturing to the instantly recognizable skyline of downtown. She swallowed. "This is Brockton Bay."


	4. 1,4 - Pareidolia

I am not 100% satisfied with this, but I suspect I could revise it for weeks and not be satisfied.

* * *

 _"The headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse."_

 **To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

1.4 - Pareidolia

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

Once the initial shock of our arrival in this strangely same place wore off, the recriminations began. It's one of the stranger human needs: more than food, more than shelter, more than friendship or intimacy or love, people need somebody to blame.

Grue turned his head to look at Tattletale. I couldn't see his eyes through his skull mask, but he was probably glaring. "Okay," he said, making a visible effort to be calm. "What the hell, Tattletale?"

She looked at him. When she didn't say anything, he took a single step forward. "You said we were safe," Grue hissed at her. "You said we didn't have to worry about moving our hideout for another week at least."

"I made an educated guess," she answered. "I was wrong. Sue me."

"An educated guess," Grue echoed. "God damn it, Tattletale! We all could have died! We WOULD have died if that bomb hadn't malfunctioned at the last second!"

Tattletale opened her mouth, then she winced and put a hand to her forehead. "Not a malfunction," she said. "The bomb would have killed us. She sent us here, instead." She indicated me.

I blinked. "What?"

"Is that another educated guess?" Grue asked.

"I didn't send us here," I said, and the words sounded hollow.

Regent eyed me, and my eyes went briefly to his black ring. "So it's her fault, then," he said.

Wait. My fault? "It's my fault we're all still alive?" I asked.

"Best educated guess based on the relevant data," Tattletale said. "She's the X-factor." Tattletale smirked at me. "Thanks for saving all our lives, S," she said, "even if you did it by accident."

"I'm pretty sure I didn't do that," I said. If I'd done it I had no idea how I'd done it, but now that she'd said it I wasn't sure at all, and denying it just felt like lying.

"So where are we?" Grue asked. He didn't sound happy, but the conversation had been successfully derailed from the subject of whose fault it was.

"Brockton Bay," Tattletale said.

"You know what I meant," Grue said.

Tattletale nodded. "I can't say for sure yet. Maybe an alternate universe, one closer to us than Earth Aleph. Maybe the future. Maybe both."

"Fuck," Regent said, and Grue nodded in agreement.

"How do we get home?" Grue asked. He looked at me. "If you brought us here, can you send us back?"

I felt very put on the spot, and I shook my head. "Even if I believe you that I brought us here, I have no idea how I did it." The image of the Pattern from my dreams seemed to blaze in the darkness behind my eyes when I blinked. "So unless one of you knows how to teach me to either time travel or walk between worlds, we need to find another way back."

"We?" Tattletale asked. I was pretty sure she knew where this was going and just wanted me to say it out loud.

I sighed. "I know I'm a hero and you're villains, but we aren't enemies, and if I'm the only one who can take us back…" I let the words trail off for a few heartbeats. "It wouldn't be right to just leave you all stranded here," I concluded. "I'm not joining your gang, but until we get home, truce."

"Truce," Grue agreed, and Tattletale and Regent echoed him a second later.

"Bitch?" Grue asked.

"Fine," Bitch said.

And that was how I found common cause with the Undersiders.

After some discussion we split up to see what each of us could learn about our present situation with a plan to meet back here in the morning. I collected the briefcase they'd given me from where it was floating in the water nearby, and I went home.

Maybe the others had some kind of plan to find out what was going on in the city, but all I could think was that if I'd traveled in time, then as far as Dad knew, I'd just disappeared. And even though I knew that would hurt him more than anything, maybe even more than when Mom died, I felt strangely ambivalent about it. Yes, I wanted to see him and make sure he was okay, and yet…

No. I needed to check on him at the very least. We might not have had the best relationship these days, but I didn't want him to think I was dead. I just didn't want to have to talk to him was all.

As I ruminated I made my way through flooded streets, getting a better view of the city as I went.

Brockton Bay wasn't entirely without power. The Docks were dark, but the Protectorate Rig out in the Bay seemed to have some lights running, there were a few scattered lights downtown, enough to show part of the skyline, and there was a glow like distant lights coming from the other side of Captain's Hill. People were few and far between, and those that I did see moved with a certain furtiveness that brought a gnawing worry into my heart when I saw it. There was no sign of PRT or police presence until I left the floodwaters behind just a few blocks away from my house.

There was a police car crashed into a telephone pole, the front end of the vehicle crumpled around it, and all the windows were broken. No one was inside, but the front seat was stained with dried blood. None of the street lights were working. They had all been broken. All the windows of all the houses I could see were broken.

My brow furrowed at the sight. Had the windows back at the Undersiders' headquarters been broken, too? Now that I thought about it, I believe they had been.

My gnawing worry flowered into a pervasive dread, and I walked on, hoping that what I suspected was wrong. A short time later, I rounded the corner of the last block and caught sight of home.

It was a two story house in what had been a middle-class neighborhood back when Brockton Bay had more of a middle-class. Between Mom's salary as a college professor and Dad's as head of hiring for the Dockworkers Association, we'd been comfortable, then. Not so much anymore. The house had some water damage, but less than most places. The windows were broken, but someone had covered them over with strips of now-shredded duct tape. Shards of glass clung to the tape strips like dewdrops on the petals of an ugly silver flower.

I went in, taking care to skip over the rotted middle step up to the porch.

The bottom floor looked like it had been hit by a glass tornado. All the windows shared the same condition as what I'd seen from the outside. The sliding glass door that led into the backyard hadn't been contained in tape as well as the rest. The television, the microwave, the oven door, all covered in tattered tape. The pictures that had decorated the walls were missing. The food in the fridge was spoiled or on its way there.

I went upstairs through shards of glass and a dry red-brown trail and found Dad's room empty, his bed soaked in blood.

A few discarded glass shards littered the torn sheets. The blood was most of the way towards dry, only still wet where it had pooled. This was days old, and there was no death smell. Whatever had happened here was over and done, but that didn't help my nerves.

My room was empty, and my backpack had been left sitting in the closet; there were stains on it that I didn't recognize and a faint fruit juice smell. Some of my clothes were missing from my closet, but I found something more normal to wear.

I gathered up my costume plus several changes of clothes and underwear and packed them into the backpack along with soap and other essentials, though the first aid kit Dad kept under the sink was missing. Then I took a few hundred dollars from the briefcase, stowed the briefcase underneath my bed, put the backpack down by the front door, and continued my search of the house.

The basement was full of spiders. Black widows, mostly. Spider silk was everywhere. Outlines in the dust showed that someone had hastily removed several pieces of furniture that I couldn't account for. Here and there I found strips of a strange grey cloth.

In the coal chute, I found a costume made from the same material with chitinous armored panels. It took several attempts to free it without disturbing a large black widow that had built a nest there, but when I held it in my hands, I saw that it was perfectly sized for me.

I'd never made anything like this, and the sight of the costume - was it made of silk? - more than anything convinced me that this was not the future, or at least not the future of my world. I was looking at the work of some other Taylor Hebert's hand, and I shuddered.

I took the costume and packed it away in the backpack with the rest of my supplies. It was well made - a huge improvement over my own attempts at one - and I told myself that it wasn't theft if Taylor Hebert was the one who had made it, and I could always give it back if the other me came looking for it.

It was almost too dark to see when I left the house. The city was dark, but the light of the gibbous moon allowed me to see my way well enough. The idea of sleeping in that other Taylor's glass-shredded house did not appeal, with Dad's bed soaked in blood and nothing but my own growing anxiety for company; I set out for Captain's Hill, where I had seen the glow of lights.

Two dark blocks later, a shattered street light flickered to life, fitful at first, then more strongly. It cast a pool of yellow-white illumination the size of a street intersection, and as I passed into it, the borders of the night beyond its glow went black as pitch. I couldn't see the stars, and though the street light was broken and no filament burned to give light, a light hung there nonetheless.

A voice spoke in the darkness, slow and melodious, every syllable given delicate, deliberate care. "Pardon me, young lady," it said, "but you seem familiar to me. Have we met?"

Something moved in the dark, and I saw a brief flash of animal eyes regarding me, gathering and reflecting the light.

I felt something cold moving down my spine. "Who's there?" I asked.

"I beg your pardon," said the voice. I thought it sounded male, but there was no certainty. The figure in the dark moved forward, and as it came forward it seemed to diminish until a tiny black kitten padded out into the light. His paws and ears were tipped with ivory-white, his eyes were an almost luminous green, and his tail swished lazily behind him as he spoke. "I am called Pyewacket, young lady. Might I have the honor of knowing your name in turn?"

I tried not to stare. "Ca… call me 'S,'" I said after once again failing to think of a suitable cape name, and being unwilling to give my real name to random talking kittens I happen to meet at night, no matter how adorable.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Ess," Pyewacket said, making a courtly little gesture with his right-front paw. "Tell me, how does this evening find you?"

"Um," I said, "I'm good." A moment passed before I thought to say anything else. "How are you?" I asked.

The kitten smiled, and it showed more pointed teeth than I was comfortable with, and his shadow seemed larger than it should have been. "Oh, capital," he answered, drawing out the space between the two words as he gave them voice.

"So," I said, "how can I help you?"

"By indulging my curiosity," Pyewacket said. "I am a curious cat by nature, so imagine my interest when I happened to observe you and your friends come here out of Shadow. T'was a most unusual occurrence, and I would know which of you was responsible for the event."

Confusion stopped my tongue for a time. "I don't know what you mean," I said.

"There's no need to be coy, my dear," Pyewacket said, and he began to prowl a slow, large circle around me, keeping to the edge of illumination cast by the lamp post. "I know you aren't a native. I saw you cross over through Shadow. Your passage is what drew my attention in the first place. Was it you? You have the right scent, at least."

This didn't seem like a conversation that was headed anywhere good. A dozen possible replies went through my mind, and then, "Can you help me get home?" seemed to all but leap from my tongue, and I regretted the words almost as soon as I said them.

The kitten's shadow turned its head to regard me as the real kitten stopped his circling, sat, and began to lick his paw. His long tail swished in the lamp-light. "Why would you need my help with such a task?" he asked.

The words seemed to tumble out of my mouth before I could stop them. "Because I don't know how we got here or how to leave," I said.

"There exists a possibility of your safe return," Pyewacket said. "Therefore, you will return safely to your native Shadow."

My eyes narrowed. No words came forth almost without my choosing to speak them this time. Was this creature a Master, or did I just make bad decisions when faced with the creepy-cute? "That doesn't make any sense," I said.

"No?" the kitten asked, and even that one word was melodious and lovely. "It will. Good evening, Ms. Ess. Perhaps we shall meet again some night."

He was gone before I could answer. He stepped out of the lamp-light, and he was gone.

I stared at the place where he had vanished for a long moment, running over our conversation in my mind before I asked aloud, "What the hell was that?"

The night didn't answer, but the street light - had it been a lamp post a moment ago? - went out, the moon and stars returned, and perhaps that was answer enough. I went on as if in a dream, and the memory of my encounter with Pyewacket seemed to waver several times; each time, I grit my teeth and clung to the memory until it grew solid again, and each time the effort was exhausting.

In time I came to the park on Captain's Hill. There was a refugee shelter here, and I could hear the droning buzz of the generators before I saw the lights. I kept moving as I stepped into the floodlights. Someone shouted. Then a hand fell on my shoulder.

The memory of Pyewacket wavered again, began to fade. I clenched my teeth and set myself against it, and some distant part of me recognized that this was very bad.

Someone was speaking to me. There were people, and most of them were hurt, most covered in bandages.

A woman with a kindly if tired smile gave me water, which I drank thirstily. She led me to an open cot, and I slid off my over-full backpack and shoved it underneath. Then I sank down into it without taking off my shoes, closed my eyes, and went away for a few hours.


	5. 1,5 - Pareidolia

**To Walk in Shadow**

by P.H Wise

1.5 - Pareidolia

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

I had the dream again. Lanterns and torches, fire that burned and did not consume, round and around and down into darkness. The long walk through natural cavern. A huge metal-bound door, a black floor as smooth as glass in the chamber beyond it, and in that floor: the Pattern. Loops and swirls, lines and angles and filigree, all burning blue-white within the smooth black floor, and I was within it and upon it. Two steps taken, and I could feel something like an electric current running through me, and my hair stirred - longer than in the waking world, but still short like a boy's.

I took a third step, and the resistance increased. A shudder went through the universe. The roof of the chamber splintered and cracked, and light poured through, blinding at first, then resolving; the pattern was reflected above as well as below. It was written on the walls, in the angles, and in me as well.

I raised my foot to take a fourth step, and a voice like thunder said, "Good morning, my dear. Are you feeling any better?"

Light flared. Nothing made sense. Reality itself seemed to shake apart into nothingness and back. And then I opened my eyes and sat up in my cot, suddenly fully awake.

I was in a large tent with three families of four or five each and twenty cots like mine lined up in rows. A woman stood over me dressed in a Red Cross shirt over blue jeans, and I nodded in answer to her question. "A little," I said.

She smiled. "Glad to hear it," she said. "Breakfast starts in half an hour, and there's a sign-in for people who are trying to find family members."

"What…" I began, and then thought better of it. I wasn't sure if I wanted to confess not to knowing anything about how the city had gotten the way it was now. I weighed the potential consequences of revealing my ignorance against the need for information, and the need for information won. "What happened?" I asked.

The woman - her name tag said, "Janet" - gave me an opaque look. "What do you mean?" she asked.

I hesitated, allowing some of the discomfort I actually felt to show in my expression. It was risky to tell something like the truth, but I felt like it was probably nowhere near as dangerous to tell it to a Red Cross volunteer than it would be to tell the police or the PRT.

It would help if I could be on the verge of tears, but I hadn't been good at fake-tears for a long time. Emma had been a master of the technique; she could have conveyed exactly the right amount of vulnerability, shell-shock and just a hint of tears to have Janet and anyone else she wanted eating out of her hand.

I tried to bring forth grief and confusion and shell-shock to sell the story I was about to tell, and I'm pretty sure I just looked constipated for my trouble. "The last thing I remember before I fell down on a flooded street near my house yesterday was going out for a jog in the evening on April 30," I told her. As stories went, it probably wasn't the best I could have come up with, but it had the advantage of being mostly true.

Janet studied my face, and I couldn't tell what she was thinking. Then her expression softened. "We've had a few cases like that," she said. "People who were exposed to that damned mist - they say Bonesaw made it, and it made us all forget things - who didn't get Panacea's cure quickly enough."

A jolt of fear went through me as everything I had suspected about the broken glass I had seen all across the docks was confirmed. There were names that every American knew, that brought with them terror and helplessness like every old Slasher movie villain brought to life, except for us it was real, had always been real. Though the cast of players had changed over the years, there were names that meant death and terror and worse. Bonesaw. Shatterbird. Mannequin. Crawler. Jack Slash.

I didn't have to fake the fear in my voice anymore. "The Nine are _here_?"

"They were," Janet said. "Nobody knows for sure if they still are. There was a fight. The Undersiders, the Wards, we could hear explosions, that mist and then the cure... We haven't heard anything since then."

"And you're all just sitting here?" I asked. "When Jack Slash could walk up and start killing at any moment?"

Janet fixed me with a disapproving look, and the tiny, tiny part of me that still wanted to please everyone, the part that Emma hadn't quite managed to completely destroy, quailed. "These people need help," she said. "If I could move them I would, but we aren't going to abandon them just because we might all still be in danger."

We considered each other for a long moment. Neither of us felt any need to mention how, in the handful of cases wherein the Slaughterhouse Nine had come to a city right after some natural disaster, they had made a point to target relief efforts. I knew it, she knew it, and apparently it didn't change anything for her: people needed help.

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "Tell me everything?"

She did this, and it took most of the time remaining before Breakfast. When the telling was done and Janet moved off to attend to her duties, my mind was awash in dismay.

It was June 13. Yesterday had been my birthday, if birthdays count when you skip over forty or so days to a day past them. I stared about at the people in the camp, noting their strangeness. The way they flinched at sudden noises, the way almost no one laughed and the children could barely be bothered to play, instead staring out with wide eyes at a world that they could not longer trust. And in the midst of all that, almost absurd in its incongruity, was a group of middle-school girls jumping rope as if their entire universe hadn't been turned upside down. There were four of them, three brown haired and one blonde. I caught a few snatches of their jump rope song as I walked across the refugee camp to join the breakfast line.

"... don't make a sound, don't make a racket..."

I wasn't hungry, but I ate my fill of pancakes and eggs just the same, and the Nurse's words played over and over in my thoughts.

Leviathan had struck Brockton Bay. The city had survived the Endbringer, but the aftermath had almost been worse. The Merchants had come out in force. People had gotten desperate. There was rioting, gang battles, home invasions, rape gangs, and all of that was before the Slaughterhouse Nine set up shop.

The city was making progress, but most places north of Captain's Hill still weren't safe outside of the Territories. The Undersiders and a new group called the Travelers ran most of the city, and they'd been the ones fighting the Nine more than anyone else.

Jesus Christ.

"... don't make a racket," the jump-rope girls sang, "you can't get rid of Mister Pyewacket..."

I froze in mid-bite and turned to regard the girls across the way. They were dirty, and three had extensive bandages, but there was nothing wrong with them besides.

"... lurking on the threshold, lurking in the din. Won't you ask him please come in..."

I decided that it was time to get back to the Undersiders' hideout to meet up with the others.

* * *

I was the third to arrive. The journey from Captain's Hill to the warehouse had been uneventful, notable mostly for giving me a better view of the damage that Leviathan had done to the city of which the Nine's arrival had halted the recovery efforts.

The damage looked a lot worse in the light of day. Brockton Bay was more or less at the mouth of the Piscataqua River; the river flowed into the bay a few miles north of town, but a dozen or so creeks and streams flowed through the city, and Leviathan had not been kind to the infrastructure that kept the water where it should be as it flowed to the bay or to the river, depending on the creek. Several levees had broken, and the neighborhoods near them - like the area around the Undersiders' hideout - were still flooded; the Boardwalk had been smashed to kindling; the Protectorate Rig wasn't quite in the same place I remembered it; power was still out in most of the city; there was a water-filled crater in the middle of downtown Brockton Bay that hadn't been there before.

Honestly, I didn't see how they could rebuild at all. It seemed more likely that the entire city would be condemned and abandoned.

The Endbringer memorial stood on Captain's Hill, just outside the camp, an obelisk of stainless steel and black marble, and it gave me a start when I looked at it and saw the Pattern from my dream inscribed thereupon. It was an illusion: a trick of the light. There and gone, and left behind was the names of the dead.

Aegis / Carlos Martinez

Escutcheon / Tyrone Venson

Erudite / Mavis Shoff

Fenja / Jessica Biermann

Fierceling /

Frenetic /

Furrow /

Gallant / Dean Stansfield

Geomancer / Tim Mars

Good Neighbor / Roberto Peets

Hallow /

Herald / Gordon Eckhart

Humble /

The importance of what I was seeing hit me all at once. My eyes went wide. Then I rushed back to the camp, got myself paper and a pen, and wrote down the list of names in full, adding the next to the above:

Impel / Corey Steffons

Iron Falcon / Brent Woodrow

Jotun /

Kaiser / Max Anders

Manpower / Neil Pelham

Mister Eminent /

Oaf / Wesley Scheaffer

Pelter / Stefanie Lamana

Penitent /

Quark / Caroline Ranson

Resolute / Georgia Woo

Saurian / Darlene Beckman

Sham /

Shielder / Eric Pelham

Smackdown / Jennie Ryan

Snowflake / Charlotte Tom

Strider / Craig McNish

Uglymug /

Velocity / Robin Swoyer

Vitiator /

WCM /

Zigzag / Bennie Debold and Geoff Schearn

At the bottom on the side of the memorial that faced the city, someone had carved crude words into the marble, adding another handful of names beneath the last of the official tally all in blocky capital letters:

KOOROW BULLIT

MILK STUMPY

BROOTUS JOODUS

AXIL GINGIR

I barely took note of those last, instead staring down at the paper where I'd written the names of the fallen, my eyes traveling over the more relevant ones again and again:

Kaiser. Gallant. Aegis. Fenja. Shielder and Manpower.

Holy shit. Gallant, Aegis, Shielder and Manpower, all dead? And Kaiser was Max Anders. The leader of the city's white supremacist neo-nazi parahuman gang was one of its most prominent citizens. He owned Medhall: one of the most important companies in town. If this was true back home as well as here, this could be very big. I very carefully folded up the piece of paper, put it in a Ziploc bag in case of water exposure, and secured the bag in my over-full backpack.

Tattletale met me when I reached the Undersiders lair, my presence announced in advance of my arrival by the sound of sloshing floodwater.

"Hey," she called. She was out of costume, her hair in a tight braid, and without her mask, if I hadn't recognized the voice, I wouldn't have recognized her.

I tried to smile. "Hey," I answered. I hadn't bothered with my costume, either. I wasn't completely comfortable with showing my face, but wearing a mask in a disaster zone and while sloshing around in a flooded neighborhood seemed counterproductive and more likely to draw unwanted attention than not. "Learn anything interesting?" I asked.

"Plenty," she answered. "Want to get out of this water?" she asked.

"Please," I said.

She led me into the red brick building. The bottom floor was flooded just like the street, but there was a loft where the Undersiders actually lived, and that was dry and warm, lit mostly by candles. There was a main living area with a couch and a bunch of comfortable looking chairs gathered in front of an oversized television and entertainment center; the kitchen area kind of went right up against the living area with no clear delineation between the two except for the furniture. Regent - Alec - was sitting on the couch in front of the television, going over a pack of ornate playing cards. He was dry and his clothes were clean, and he looked bored.

Lisa directed me into one of the bedrooms to change into clean clothes, and I did so. I put on the silk costume I'd taken from my other self's home beneath my outer clothes, leaving off the mask. It was uncomfortable to wear it beneath my clothes, and I wasn't sure if I'd do it again in the future. There wasn't any running water, but I used some plastic water bottles and some soap to clean up at the sink as best I could. That done, I went back into the main room.

Alec was still fiddling with that pack of cards, organizing them into piles. Every now and again, he would draw another, look at what he had in hand, and continue.

Cups. Coins. Wands. Swords.

He played a Major Trump, and on it was a portrait made by a master artist. It wasn't labelled, but it depicted a wily-looking man with straw-colored hair dressed in orange, red, and brown, and I blinked. "Are you playing solitaire with tarot cards?" I asked.

Alec nodded. "Yep."

"How does that work?"

"Poorly," he replied.

"You like solitaire?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "God, no," he said.

"Why are you playing it, then?"

He gestured at the entertainment center. "This is what no electricity reduces me to," he said, and I didn't have to fake my smile.

"Ah," I said.

He placed the Queen of Swords on top of her Knight, and my thoughts turned to the Pattern that I had dreaming of, that I was dreamed of.

It was more than a design. I knew that as surely as I knew how to move my own hands, how to walk, how to laugh. It was a fact as elemental as the air I breathed, and it brought with it a mingled longing, a yearning, a recognition, a sense of home, and the terror of eternity and of Oblivion both, all mixed together in a storm-tossed sea of emotion that was easier and more comfortable to avoid thinking about.

I was thinking about it now. I studied that Eldritch design lodged in my mind's eye, and I wondered, and I trembled.

Alec placed the seven of cups atop the six.

Grue - Brian - came up the back stair, and he was dry. He went to talk to Lisa.

I looked up at the ceiling. Exposed piping. Air vents. The stink of brackish water and brine. Candles flicker. I stand and begin to pace, suddenly restless, terror/fear/longing/home roiling inside my chest.

The light changes. Redder, now. The sea-smell a little sharper, the texture of the ceiling flowing water-like from metal into wood.

 ** _Pattern_**.

Am I losing my mind? I must be losing my mind. Lisa is staring at me, her jaw dropped open in an expression of horrified fascination. Brian's eyes are wide. Alec is still seated, still playing solitaire. He looks annoyed. Lanterns where candles once stood. Am I doing this? Am I reshaping the universe? Am I moving to another one? I pace and pace and try to will the changes back.

If I am causing the changes, surely I can change them back.

I set my will to the task, taking hold of... something. The gleam of a red sun through unbroken glass. The light yellows. I feel something moving around me. Candles where the lanterns stood. Metal ripples across the ceiling to consume the wood, sprouting vents and exposed piping like cancerous growths.

I'm shaking like a leaf. I keep pacing. When I stop moving, so do the changes. If I clench my eyes shut and plug my ears, the changes stop, too, but they aren't undone, aren't reversed.

The world is still wrong.

Another step, and Brian is staring at me, but he's wrong. His hair is long and braided, and his clothes look more appropriate to the 19th century than to modern day. He wears a gun belt but makes no move to draw. I keep pacing. The world shifts. Bleeds. Changes. His clothes shift, growing more modern. His hair shortens into corn-rows.

"Stop it," Alec said, and the universe shuddered.

The world became normal again. I was in the Undersiders' loft with Alec, Lisa, and Brian. A fly landed on my hand, and I brushed it away.

Lisa and Brian were staring at me with wide eyes. Alec continued to look annoyed.

I was still trembling. My mind raced. As far as I could tell, I had just reshaped reality and then changed it back. Had Alec done something, too? What was his power, anyway?

"What the hell?" Brian asked. "What the fucking hell?" Another fly, this one settling onto Brian's shoulder.

"Sorry," I said, and sat down. "I'm sorry. I think you're right." I turned my thoughts away from the Pattern, away from everything it brought with it. I took deep, regular breaths until I stopped shaking. Then I looked up at Brian and Lisa. "I think I'm the one who brought us here."

Lisa sat down next to me, put an arm around my shoulder. She wasn't my friend - I didn't have any friends - but it felt good, and I could pretend that she cared.

Bitch and two dogs came up the stairs while we were sitting there, all soaking wet and dripping water except for the dry puppy in her arms. She stared at us, and her dogs crouched down, letting out twin rumbling growls.

"Maybe you should explain," Brian said.

Bitch snarled, not taking her eyes off us. The two dogs by her side began to grow.

And a voice like something out of a nightmare, all chirping and buzzing and utterly inhuman said, " **Maybe you should.** "

Insects began to pour in through the broken windows like a biblical plague, and Bitch said, "Sirius, Bentley: Hurt."


	6. 1,6 - Pareidolia

So this is only half of what I had planned for the chapter. Cut it in half and moved the rest to next chapter when it became apparent that it was going to take me at least another week to finish it, since I get antsy about going so long between updates. It works out, though, since it allows me to actually examine some things that happened off screen, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

 **To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

1.6 - Pareidolia

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

The swarm was so thick with bugs it seemed almost a solid writhing mass, and it paused when it covered the end of the lair closest to the window. How many individual bodies were in that swarm? I had no idea. Hundreds of thousands? A million? Flies, roaches, bees, wasps, dragonflies, beetles, and still more, and more, and the sheer sound of their scuttling movements and their buzzing wings was almost a physical force.

Bitch and her dogs didn't hesitate. I didn't realize it at the time but later learned that these were not the three dogs who had come with us to this alternate world but entirely different animals that she was quickly turning into hulking canine figures of muscled, armored flesh.

"Wait!" Lisa exclaimed. "This is…" and that was as far as she got before she had to scramble out of the way of the first dog; she didn't quite make it. The dog clipped her with his shoulder and the impact spun Lisa and sent her sprawling into the table with so much force that the cheap IKEA-wood cracked and the whole thing fell over with a clatter.

Black smoke seemed to boil around Grue, swiftly flooding out to smother the insect swarm, but that wasn't going to help me or Regent, who were the targets of the second and third dogs.

The second dog, grown to almost the size of a mastiff, bounded at me, and my hand to hand training kicked in automatically. I was strong, but the dog weighed as much as two of me, and a collision would work in its favor, so I sidestepped, twisting with my hips to speed the movement and allowing the rotation of my body to speed my retreat; I followed this with a single full step back.

The dog hit the couch instead of me, bowled over it, and broke the coffee table when it landed on the far side. I heard the buzzing crackle of an electric discharge and a canine cry of pain from somewhere to my left, and Bitch swore furiously, but the dog I faced was already on its feet, shedding pieces of coffee table as easily as water droplets, and I didn't have time or attention to spare looking around.

The dog leaped over the couch. I side-stepped again, rotated again, and this time as I reset my stance I seized the dog under the throat and the belly, using the creature's momentum for my own purpose. I twisted, putting the strength not just of my hands and arms but of my entire body into a throw that carried 250 pounds of dog twenty feet across the room and then through a shattered window frame and out onto the flooded factory floor where it landed it a tremendous splash and a pained yelp.

I didn't have time to enjoy even a moment of temporary victory; the insects boiled out of Grue's darkness, and they swarmed over him, over me, over Tattletale and Regent. I clenched my eyes shut too late; a cockroach smeared its thorax across my exposed eyeball, and a burning spike of pain followed instantly, like hot sauce in the eye but a million times worse. More smeared across my closed eyelids after. Flies crawled up my nose and beetles tried to scurry into my mouth, and I bit down on them, crunching I don't know how many of them with my teeth, and now the burning, searing pain was in my nose and mouth, and I writhed in agony. I swallowed dead beetles, and then I vomited, and that made everything worse.

The bugs covered me, crawled over every inch of my exposed face and head, they writhed inside my nose and a few had gotten into my sinuses, and even without the burning the feeling was indescribable, but they couldn't get beneath the skin-tight costume I wore beneath my clothes, that I had stolen from that other Taylor Hebert. That was something, at least. Everywhere that was exposed - my face and my head - felt like the worst sunburn I'd ever had times ten. It was almost like…

Pepper spray. That other Taylor had covered her bugs - or some of them - in pepper spray. That clever bitch.

There came a second crackling discharge. I felt a painful jolt pass over me as if I'd stuck my finger into a light socket, and all my muscles briefly locked up. Then it was gone, and I heard the sound of hundreds of thousands of bug bodies falling to the floor like the world's most disgusting rain.

My eyes didn't want to open, but I forced them anyway, and through the agony, through tear-streaked eyes and burning and feeling what felt like a river of snot coming out of my nose I saw Regent standing over me, a blue arc of electric light dancing on the tip of his scepter. Was it a Tinker device? … didn't matter right now.

He looked as bad as I felt, but I took the hand he offered and got back to my feet.

Tattletale was down. I couldn't see Grue or his darkness anywhere. One of Bitch's dogs was unconscious or dead on the ground and the second was in the flooded factory below our loft, splashing and barking, but the third stalked toward us, teeth bared and growling, and it was still growing. Bitch stood behind the monster, her mask discarded, staring me in the eye with her teeth bared.

"What the hell are you…" I began, and then realized the obvious: this was the local version of Bitch and not the one we'd brought with us.

Her lip curled up a little further. "Sirius," she said, "kill."

The dog charged, and the floorboards of the loft creaked beneath its increased mass.

I had to sprint to get out of the way this time, and I dove over the couch, rolled, came up on my feet as Sirius twisted to follow, jaws snapping, teeth flashing; his jaws closed around an entire seat's worth of leather couch and he shook his head violently, ripping the couch apart and sending oversized pieces tumbling. One struck Tattletale where she lay bound helplessly, tied up with the same grey material I'd seen in the local Taylor's basement.

Bitch came at me, then, leading with a vicious punch that I blocked on the meat of my forearm. She came in with another, and I got the feeling that if I'd been a normal human, I would have lost: she wasn't a martial artist, but she knew how to fight and had no hesitation about hurting people, and that counts for a hell of a lot. But I wasn't normal, and I wasn't a novice; I caught her arm, twisted it and her, pivoted, and ended the maneuver with me behind her, her arm held securely in my joint lock at just shy of its breaking point.

"Tell your dog to stand down, Bitch," I snarled.

More bugs were coming in, now. Not as huge and uniform a swarm as the first time but enough to be a huge problem very quickly. My eyes, nose, and mouth continued to burn so badly that I wanted to collapse into a ball and cry. I could barely see, and my face was practically covered in snot, but I pushed on anyway, because losing wasn't an option. Not again.

Something touched my side, and I felt a shock of electricity run through my body, and I fell. I was rolling as soon as I was able, looking for my attacker, but there was nothing but empty air.

I felt the touch of whatever it was again, this time to my forehead, and I fell. I tried to get up a third time, got another shock. A fourth time. Another shock.

It took me longer to recover that time. I heard voices talking. "... should just kill them," Bitch said.

"We're not killing them," replied a voice that I instantly recognized as my own.

I looked up. I saw Taylor Hebert in her costume with her bug-themed mask and goggles. Didn't see Bitch in my field of view. Next to Taylor was a girl dressed all in black with a pale grey demon mask and black scarf concealing her identity, Regent's scepter held in her right hand. "Damn, Skitter," the demon-masked girl said. "Other you doesn't know when to quit, either."

I tried to get up, but my arms and legs were bound. I glared up at the girls.

The other me - Skitter - put something over my head and it stole my sight. Silk. A silk bag?

All I could see was darkness.

* * *

They led me a few blocks through flooded streets, and the water became increasingly shallow as we went. Walking was difficult: my hands were tied behind my back and my legs were bound such that I had to take awkward shuffling steps to successfully ambulate. When the water had subsided to ankle level, I heard a car door open, and though I considered trying to break my fetters and flee, I decided that this was the wrong moment, that it would only get me recaptured, and quickly.

They put me in the back of what I assumed was a van and drove away.

"Tattletale?" I whispered once we were moving. "Regent?" My eyes, nose and mouth we're starting to hurt a little less, and the flow of snot was slowing.

I heard a muffled, wordless sound, like a girl trying to speak through a gag. If Regent was with us, he didn't answer me.

"No talking," Grue's voice said.

We made fourteen turns, and I was sure that a bunch of them were only made to confuse my sense of direction. No one spoke for the next ten minutes. Then a phone rang, and Tattletale's voice answered, "Yes?"

I couldn't make out the specific words being spoken, but the voice on the other end of the line was male, and cold.

"I see," Tattletale said.

Someone stirred next to me.

"Okay," Tattletale said. Then she spoke in a louder voice, "Change of plans, kids. The boss wants our doubles."

My eyes narrowed behind the black bag. Boss?

"Whatever," came Regent's voice.

"How did he find out about them?" Skitter asked, and if anyone answered her, it wasn't given verbally.

We made another dozen turns over the course of maybe fifteen minutes before the van came to a stop and the engine shut off. By the time they pulled me out, I felt more or less recovered from the pepper spray bugs Skitter had used on me.

We went into a building, then down a flight of stairs, then down another, continuing on down, down, down. Eventually I was made to sit down and was handcuffed to a heavy steel table before my other bonds were undone. Then there was silence.

I was pretty sure I could break the handcuffs if I had to, but it seemed like breaking them now would serve little purpose and only get me put in brute restraints. Honestly, I wasn't sure why I wasn't already in brute restraints. They'd seen me throw the dog, hadn't they? It took me a little maneuvering to get the silk bag off my head without using my hands and thus revealing my brute rating more than I already had, but I managed.

I was in an empty interrogation room, for what else would you call a small, bare room with a concrete floor, no decorations whatever and no settings except for a single stainless steel table and a trio of chairs, two of them across from me, all bolted to the floor, a single door, and a suspiciously window-sized mirror mounted in the left-hand wall? Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead. I was alone, and there were no shadows.

Nobody came, and after a time I turned to regard the mirror. At first it was to give an expectant look to the people who were probably watching me from behind it, but then my eyes went to my reflection.

I'd been stripped of my outer clothing and then sprayed down with a fire hose before they'd put me in here, and all I had on now was the costume I'd stolen from my alternate-universe self, all black and grey silk with chitinous armor panels. My face was still a mess, but I cleaned it up a little before my eyes went to the rest of the room reflected in the mirror.

As I regarded that reflection and the distortion of perspective it provided, a strange feeling came over me, awesome and horrible at the same time. You know the feeling when you have something on the tip of your tongue, but it just doesn't quite click, and no matter how much you dwell on it the word or words won't come? As I studied the room's reflection, I felt something like that. I could feel… something, and it was all around me, and I was distinct and set apart from it. It was something huge, grand and untouchable, and I trembled: for I had the universe on the tip of my tongue, if I could only find the words to speak it forth.

I was thirsty, but there was no water and it seemed unlikely that anyone would bring me any. I hadn't had anything to drink since the shelter, and I felt certain that if I got up and walked across the room, I might be able to change things enough to find something to drink. Maybe. Assuming I didn't screw it up; I still didn't really know exactly what my power was or what it did, but it felt like it was part Mover, part Shaker. That is, in part it let me travel, and in part it let me affect the universe around me.

When I'd tried to use the power earlier, it had gone wrong, and I'd barely managed to undo the changes I'd made. And if my power did alter reality somehow, well, would it be right to change the universe just so I could have a drink of water? Did it matter that I was only changing a tiny portion of it to sate my own thirst? If I kept changing it, was there a point at which it stopped being the universe and just became a thing I had made?

I couldn't see beneath the table from my position, and it occurred to me that someone might have left a bottle of water beneath it, perhaps near one of the table legs. The thought stuck in my mind, and soon it actually seemed probable to me, or at least probable enough that I wanted to check. Not wanting to scramble beneath the table for no reason, I stood up as much as I was able in order to get a better look in the mirror.

 _… water bottle beneath the table…_

I breathed in sharply and froze.

Beneath the table, next to the left back leg on the same side as me, was a plastic water bottle. Condensation beaded on its outer surface, and I honestly had no idea if it had already been there when I'd come in, or if I'd somehow changed the universe to place it there.

"Have I gone mad?" I wondered aloud.

The door opened just as I spoke. Tattletale came in followed by a soldier dressed in black, a rifle slung at his side.

"I'm afraid so," Tattletale answered. "You're entirely bonkers." She grinned. "But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are."

"L…" I stopped before I could get more than the consonant sound. "Tattletale?" I asked.

"The two and not quite only," she answered.

She looked like my Tattletale. She had the same skin-tight black and lavender outfit, the same domino mask, dark blonde hair and bottle-glass green eyes. I studied her face, and her grin faded as I did so. I noted the faint scar at the corner of her lips that traced a line down to her jaw, like someone a long time ago had tried to carve a lopsided frown in place of her grin, and my eyes narrowed.

"A gift from Jack Slash," she said.

"Is he still in the city?" I asked.

She shook her head. That was something, at least.

Silence. She wasn't the real Tattletale. Or wasn't my Tattletale. Whichever.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"An explanation would be a good place to start," she answered.

I opened my mouth, hesitated. "... I don't know where to begin," I said.

"Begin at the beginning," Tattletale said with a smirk, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

"Maybe I'd be more inclined to explain our presence here if Bitch and Skitter hadn't attacked us for no reason," I said. I noticed the water bottle again. It had fallen over at some point and rolled out from underneath the table, and Tattletale's eyes went to it as well. She raised an eyebrow.

"Thirsty?" she asked.

I nodded.

She made no move to get me the water, instead sitting down across from me. "You know I'll figure it out whether you explain it or not," she said.

God, what the hell even was her power, anyway? I knew Tattletale was a Thinker, but that was all.

Almost as soon as I'd thought that, her smile widened a little. "Oh ho," she said. "So you didn't know. Has the other me not explained how our power works?" She studied my face. "How long have you been with the Undersiders where you come from?"

I tried to school my features, not to give anything away. I thought I kept a reasonably good blank face, but Tattletale seemed to disagree based on what she saw there.

"You haven't joined at all, have you. You're still trying to be a hero, and you're only allied with them now out of convenience. Am I close?"

I didn't answer, and that didn't seem to matter.

"I know you don't really know me, and you might not think of your Tattletale as anything more than a means to an end, but in this world, I'm your friend, and I don't want to see anything bad happen even to a double of you."

That touched something raw and angry inside me. "What's your point?" I asked, and it came out as half a snarl.

"The point is, you're a lone hero from another universe stuck in a villain's lair, and I'm the only one who can help you. My boss sees you all as a potential resource. The other team that works for him think you and the others you were with are just clones of us, and that we should kill you as quickly as we can. I'm on your side, Taylor, but I'm the only one. And if you won't cooperate, there's only so much I can do."

I knew she was manipulating me. The only question was whether I stood to lose more from telling her what she wanted to know or from keeping silent. I wanted to stay silent just to spite her, but I shoved the belligerent desire out of the way and thought, and Tattletale let me think.

At length, I asked, "Can I have a piece of paper and a pen?"

Tattletale gestured, and the guard spoke into his radio. There was a short delay, and then a second guard, this one a woman, came in bearing the items I'd requested. She set them down on the table in front of me and then exited the room.

Tattletale regarded me expectantly.

I took up the pen, set pen to paper, and I drew the symbol that had haunted my dreams, that I occasionally saw in the darkness between blinks. Even there on a piece of paper, it felt as though it were calling me somehow: there was a yearning, a sense of home, a need, and all of it seemed to express a single word in purely emotional terms: Come. When I finished the design, I pushed the paper toward Tattletale, and as she regarded it I asked, "Does this symbol mean anything to you?"

Tattletale looked down. At first, all I saw on her face was incomprehension. Then her eyes flit from side to side across the image. Sweat broke out upon her brow, but she didn't look away from the Pattern I had drawn. She flinched, and still she didn't look away. Her pupils dilated, there was more sweat, her face twisted into a grimace of pain, but slowly, ever so slowly.

I covered the image with my hand, and her head rocked back like I had punched her. The guard stepped forward, then, looking at me suspiciously. "Ma'am?" he asked, putting a hand on Tattletale's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I'm…" Tattletale began, and then clenched her eyes shut and rubbed at her temples. "I'm fine." She looked at me. "What the hell was that?" It was less a question, more a demand.

"I wish I knew," I said.

"Damn," she hissed. "I need cool darkness, or else I'm…" she rose to her feet, not bothering to finish her sentence.

"Wait," I said.

She looked back.

"The water bottle?" I asked, pointing to it.

Tattletale picked up the water bottle and set it down on the table in front of me. Then she made a hasty exit from the room, and the guard followed after.

I opened the water bottle, lifted it to my lips, and drank greedily. It was cold, and the taste was fine; I drank until it was gone. It was only after I had finished that I realized my mistake. No, I hadn't been poisoned or drugged; this was something worse.

I was wearing a skin-tight waterproof costume, and I needed to pee.

Fuck. I bet Alexandria doesn't have to put up with this sort of thing.


	7. 1,7 - Pareidolia

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

1.7 - Pareidolia

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

An hour later, I still hadn't had a chance to relieve myself, but we were all back together. Or possibly I was with the Undersiders' local doubles who were doing their damndest to make me believe they were the ones who came with me. And now that I thought about it, that did make more sense than putting us all in a locked room together after they went through the trouble of interrogating us separately.

Then again, if anyone was in a position to understand our powers, it was our captors. Maybe a heavily reinforced blast door and reinforced walls really was all they needed to contain us. Or maybe they had decided we weren't their enemies. Maybe they just weren't sure what to do with us yet. Surely our local equivalents had little reason to want to hurt us; surely their boss had even less.

It was another bare, concrete room, and we were scattered about it. The ceiling had some kind of spray nozzle spaced at regular wasn't any furniture, and Bitch had claimed the far corner for herself, and glared angrily at anyone who came near. Her dogs were missing, and I took this to be the source of her foul mood. Grue's helmet was gone, and he had a truly impressive black eye that showed a mottled red and purple against his dark skin.

The thing they don't tell you about being held captive is just how boring it is, especially when you're just put in a locked room and then ignored. After a time, I wanted to say something if only to break the oppressive silence, but Regent beat me to it.

"So who's running this show?" he asked.

No one answered at first, and then Lisa seemed to come to a decision. "The local version of Coil, probably," she said.

"He's our boss, huh?"

Tattletale nodded.

"I'm a little disappointed that a supervillain with such a stereotypical evil base hasn't showed off his torture chamber yet," he said.

Tattletale looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. Weird."

"You think he has an unnecessarily slow moving/dipping mechanism?" I asked, and Tattletale laughed a little too quickly and too loudly; there was a disturbed look on her face, and my own grin slipped as I wondered what she knew that we didn't.

"We can only hope," Alec said.

The Undersiders, I reflected, were easy to like. It was easy to think of myself as one of the group even though I wasn't, even though I knew we might be enemies once we returned home. If we returned home. Lisa was like a know-it-all older sister, Brian was gorgeous when he smiled, he'd been nice… okay, polite to me, and I kind of wanted to run my fingers through his hair, Alec was… kind of a dick, actually, and Bitch was a Bitch, and now that I thought about it, why did I want to be friends with these people exactly?

Oh. Right. Because I was an ugly, friendless loser who happened to have superpowers.

I forced myself to maintain at least something like a state of appropriate paranoia as I recalled my suspicions about the others. Of all of them, Lisa seemed least likely to have been replaced with her doppelganger considering the obvious scar and the headache I'd given her. Then again, maybe the headache had been a calculated gesture, and maybe the facial scar had been accomplished with makeup. … no. I had to assume that at least some of them were the Undersiders I came in with, and I had promised to help them get home.

I considered their faces, tried to read their expressions. Lisa seemed amused. Brian had a neutral look. Alec was bored. Bitch was in defense mode. "So," I said, "who wants to go first?"

Brian - Grue, I needed to think of him as Grue - looked my way. "Go first?" he asked. Nobody else said anything.

"Okay," I said, "sounds like it's going to be me."

I recounted what had happened to me during the time I'd gone into the city to investigate the situation. I told them how I went to my double's house, the evidence I'd found there and what I had feared, the costume in the basement and the supplies I'd taken. I described my trip from the house to Captain's Hill, mentioned that I'd run into a weird Changer on the way, and then told them all that I'd learned from the aid worker about the Slaughterhouse Nine, Leviathan's attack, and what had happened in the city since April 30. Finally, I showed them the paper on which I'd written down the names of the fallen.

"Jesus," Tattletale said. "Tear that up, S. Swallow it. Get rid of it."

I looked at her in askance. "What?"

"That piece of paper breaks every rule of cape conduct that there is," she said.

"There are rules?" I asked.

"Sure," Tattletale said. "Every game has rules; this one just has higher stakes than most. Being a cape is like playing a really high stakes game of cops and robbers…"

It took a few minutes for her to explain the Cops and Robbers theory of cape conduct in detail, but when it was done, it seemed at least mildly plausible. What it came down to was maintaining the status quo. Everyone benefitted from it, and anyone who went too far and disrupted things too badly got smacked down.

I wasn't buying it, and Lung was a big reason why, but I didn't want to argue at the moment. I'm pretty sure that she got that, too. "Right," I said at last. "I'll just… put this away until I decide what to do with it " I said, and refolded the paper and returned it to its plastic bag in my pocket, where it seemed to burn like a coal, and never mind the lack of combustion. I got uncomfortable, and I filled the silence with words. "What about you, Grue?" I asked.

"What about me?"

"I lost sight of you during the fight," I told him, "back when we were captured. What happened?"

"Oh," he said. He seemed to gather his thoughts. "I wound up on the roof," he said at last, "fighting my double. We were both immune to each other's power, so we took it hand to hand. It got weird."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Weird how?" I asked.

Grue shrugged and said nothing.

"Don't leave it there," I said. "I told you everything that happened to me."

Grue continued with some reluctance. "He got angry," he said, his voice low and troubled. "Real angry. It got worse when he got the upper hand. He started hitting me, over and over, saying it was my fault, that I wasn't strong enough..."

"That does sound pretty weird," Regent said.

Grue nodded. He paused, missed the obvious moment to resume, and then said, "I'm starting to think I've got issues."

Tattletale started cackling, and Grue's cheeks slowly colored.

"I'm pretty sure we all have issues," I offered.

"Except me," Regent said.

I regarded Regent with a look that expressed my skepticism for his claim.

"What?" he asked. "All the rest of you are crazy, sure, but I'm a picture of mental health, stability, and good judgement."

Tattletale, Grue, and even Bitch joined in the nonverbal expressions of skepticism, and Regent rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said. "Fuck all of you, too."

Time kept slipping by, and we were no closer to getting home. Ten minutes. Half an hour. I was getting seriously fed up with waiting on the good graces of our local counterparts, and about the time I was thinking to just say screw it and try to shape my way home, Tattletale finally asked, "Do you really want us to keep calling you 'S?'"

I sighed. "No. You might as well just call me Taylor."

"Good," Tattletale said. "So Taylor, tell us about your power."

"You already know about the Brute part," I said, and Tattletale agreed. "What you probably don't know is that I've always been strong, and I've always healed fast." I had their attention now. "Even when I was little, sunburns, cuts and scrapes are usually gone the next day. Bruises might last two. I broke my arm in three places, once, and I was fine in a week. What Lung did to me was the longest it had ever taken me to heal from something. It was the same with disease. I never had allergies, I rarely get sick, and when I did I got over it fast." My thoughts took a darker turn as that old, familiar pain came rising up. "Mom was the same way."

I went on. "For a while, I thought I'd gotten my powers from…" My thoughts darkened again. "... a bad day."

"You don't have to tell us about that," Brian began, but I shook my head.

"There's three girls at school that had… have been making my life pretty goddamn miserable," I began. I went on, and they listened as I sketched Emma, Sophia, and Madison's campaign against me. How it had gotten worse and worse. I felt a little pathetic and ashamed for sharing this, but nobody laughed.

I didn't cry. My voice didn't crack. I felt like shit, but I wasn't going to show that. I related it all in an uninflected near-monotone, like I could have been talking about the weather, and not a campaign of systematic bullying culminating in me being locked inside my own refuse-filled locker.

Part of me wondered why I was telling them this, why I was telling a bunch of villains I liked and might have to fight some day about the worst day of my life, especially when I didn't want them to pity me, but once I'd started, I couldn't stop. The words tumbled out one after another. I told them about being shoved into the locker, being trapped, how I didn't have the leverage I needed to force it open. How, when the janitor had found me and opened the locker, I'd come out fighting, kicking and screaming.

At some point, Lisa sat down next to me, put her arm around me, and it helped.

"I started having the dreams in the hospital."

"Dreams?" Lisa asked.

"I'd had them before, maybe once or twice, but after the locker I had them every night. I'm standing on a black floor that's like glass, except it isn't slippery. There's a pattern burned into the floor, and it looks like blue-white fire. It's a strange, looping design, weirdly angular without losing its curves, and it traces a path that leads from the outer edge opposite the door through loops, lines, curves, and filigree to an empty center.

I walk to the start of the Pattern, and it sends up sparks when I step onto it. I take a few steps, and I can feel myself changing. I wake up."

"Can you draw it?" Lisa asked.

"I can, but the other you reacted badly to it."

She frowned. "Hmm."

"I was stronger after I woke up from the first dream. I don't know by how much, though. I never really did sports or anything that physical before then. It was enough that I thought I'd gotten a brute package from the experience, but now I'm not so sure that I didn't always have it. And ever since then, sometimes, reality goes weird."

Nobody said anything to fill the silence. I went on.

"I can't control it very well, or much at all, but I can change things about the universe. It happened in the park when I met Bitch for the first time."

Bitch nodded. "The dogs didn't like it," she said.

"Again when Bakuda hit us with whatever that bomb did. Then in your hideout on this Earth. … and I'm not totally sure, but I think I might have made a water bottle exist where there wasn't one before when I was being interrogated by the other Tattletale."

Grue let out a breath. "So your power is that you can warp reality and you have almost no control over it?"

I nodded.

"Fuck me," Grue said.

"Your mom," Alec said, and his expression was unreadable. "What was her name?"

I hesitated. Was there a pressing reason not to tell him? No. I'd already gone beyond that point. "Annette," I said. "Annette Hebert."

Lisa and Brian exchanged looks. Then Brian said, "You got something you want to tell us, Alec?"

"Not really," Alec answered.

"You're hard to read, but it's not impossible," Tattletale said.

I looked at Alec, and I couldn't tell what he was thinking. If Lisa could, then her powers of observation were scary.

"I think you know what that pattern is that Taylor's been dreaming about," Lisa said. "I also think you know exactly what her power is."

"Come on, man," Brian said. "You're stuck here the same as us. Are you seriously not going to help? If you know something, say it."

"I'm not stuck," Alec answered, "I'm lying low."

My thoughts raced as the implications of that statement in conjunction with Lisa's settled into place.

"Because you don't want your family to know where you are?" Lisa asked.

"Right."

Realization came to Lisa. She saw further than I did, had information I didn't. "Oh."

"Oh what?" I asked.

She didn't turn to me but kept speaking to Alec. "When I looked into your background, I assumed you were one of Heartbreaker's kids, but you aren't, are you?"

"Not the way you were thinking." Annoyance showed in his expression, and I could only conclude it was because he meant it to. "Do we really have to talk about this now?"

"We really do," said Lisa. "You were never Jean-Paul Vasil, were you?"

"I am, but not the way you thought. He's one of my Shadows."

Shadows. The word went through my thoughts like a lightning bolt, and I stiffened and then sat up straight.

"Did you kill him?" Lisa asked, her eyes gleaming dangerously.

Alec rolled his eyes. "We both got what we wanted," he said.

"Shadows," I murmured, and some of the haziness that had settled in around the edges of the memory of my conversation with Pyewacket cleared away. There was a sense of sharpening, of things suddenly standing out in stark relief that had been slightly muddled before. "Pyewacket used that word, too," I said.

Alec whipped his head toward me, his eyes narrowed. It was the single biggest reaction he had yet displayed to anything in the time I'd known him. "What did you say?"

I blinked. "Um, Pyewacket used that word, too?"

Alec's voice had actual intensity to it, and the contrast between that and his normally flat affect was startling. "You met someone calling himself Pyewacket?"

I nodded. "After I left my house. Well, Skitter's house. He was the Changer I told you about. He took the form of a talking kitten."

"I need you to tell me everything he told you. Every word, if you can remember them. Then describe Pyewacket in as much detail as you can recall."

I did this. I told him everything, leaving out no detail.

"Shit," Alec said.

"What is he?" I asked.

Alec shook his head. "We don't have time for the explanation. We need to leave. Now."

Brian eyes this new and weirdly assertive Alec the way a person might have eyed a three-eyed fish. "How do you suggest we do that?" he asked.

Alec produced his scepter from somewhere behind his body, and I knew for a fact that it had been taken from him by our captors, but that didn't stop him from pulling it out anyway. "I've decided that it's very likely that our captors forgot to lock the door," he said.

I felt something shifting around me. The stuff, whatever it was, that I could manipulate with my power was somehow responding to Alec now, and my eyes went wide. "What did you just do?"

"Not now." He walked to the blast door, put a hand to the wheel upon it, and spun it as easily as you please until it settled into the open position, proving it to be unlocked. "Heh," he said. "I honestly wasn't sure if that would work. Someone's getting fired tonight. Let's hear it for incompetence." Then he opened the door and looked back to the rest of us who were still gawking. "Come on," he said. "We're getting the hell out of here."

"I'm not leaving without my dogs," Bitch all but snarled.

"Stay here, then," Alec said, as if it didn't much matter to him.

I frowned. "We can find her dogs, can't we?"

"We don't have time for this," Alec said.

Brian folded his arms. "Explain, then."

"Later," Alec insisted.

"Fuck you, Regent," Brian said. "We're getting Bitch's dogs."

Alec didn't look happy, but he gave in. "Fine," he said. "This way."

We left the room and followed Alec down a long corridor just as an alarm began to howl. The nozzles on the ceiling in the room we had just left came to life - too late - and began to spray containment foam, but we were already gone. A pair of guards with rifles appeared down the hallway in front of us and one of them yelled, "Stop! Surrender now and no harm will… oh fuck." He aborted his speech as we bore down on him; he and his partner leveled their rifles at us, but Alec gestured and their arms jerked upward just as they opened fire. There were two bright discharges of energy that cut swaths into the ceiling, and then we were on top of them.

Alec punched the one who had spoken. He hit him in the gut, and the guard doubled over, fell down, and threw up.

The second guard tried to bring his rifle to bear, but I wrenched it from his hands; his fingers broke like dry kindling. Then I swung the butt of the rifle at his head, and down he went.

We raced on, and I hoped that I hadn't killed him.

The facility was essentially a concrete bunker, and each corridor looked very much like any other, but Alec seemed to know where he was going, and I wondered at the lack of guards beyond the two we had run into. As we rounded a corner, i felt Alec doing once more whatever it was he had done before, and the ceiling abruptly transitioned from concrete to natural stone. We ran on. A little further, and the walls did the same, and then the floor. We were in what seemed a natural tunnel now, though electric lights were still set into the roof of the tunnel at regular intervals.

I could hear someone or something following us, running after us down the tunnel, but they were far enough back that we didn't need to turn to face them yet.

We pressed on, and the tunnel widened into a huge limestone cavern dimly lit by sunlight filtering down through an uneven ceiling; the holes that let the sunlight in - or what I took to be sunlight - were so bright in that dimness that I couldn't look at them. Stalagmites rose from the floor; stalactites hung like stone icicles from the ceiling; gemstones of green and red and pale white glittered in the walls; water drip drip dripped from above into a wide, dark pool, and I couldn't tell if it was just the lighting, but the water in it looked less like water and more like black ink, and the ripples were strange.

At the far end of the cavern there were four tunnel openings; we took the third, and it gradually sloped upward. Lisa, Brian, and Bitch were all breathing hard, but I wasn't really feeling the effort yet. The light faded to absolute darkness about a hundred feet up the tunnel, and the tip of Alec's scepter began to glow with a pale blue light to show the way. We ran on for another ten minutes, up and up and up and up; sometimes the tunnel was wide enough to for us all to move side by side; sometimes it was so narrow we had to stop running and squeeze through in single file. Brian only barely made it through a particularly tight squeeze, but then the passage widened again, and the walls transitioned from natural stone to concrete and brick work, and I heard the sound of running water.

Alec paused, then, to let the others catch their breath, and as they did, I turned to him and asked, "What is this? I know you're doing this, making these changes, but how? And how can you do it so easily?"

"This," Alec replied, "is Shadow."

Lisa began paying very close attention.

"That word again," I said. "What do you mean by it?"

"Your mom really didn't teach you anything about this?" he asked.

"Nothing."

He made an all-encompassing gesture. "All of this is Shadow. The world. The people in it. The world we came here from. Earth Aleph, too. Scion. The Endbringers. It's all Shadow. A reflection of the true world mingled with the influence of Chaos."

"That sounds crazy," I told him.

He shrugged. "I'm not the one who set it up. But there are only two real places, and the rest of the multiverse - every single alternate universe that exists or can exist or once existed - is created and sustained by the interaction between those two real places: Amber and the Courts of Chaos."

Amber. The sound of the word struck me like a thunderbolt. Had I heard it before? Had Mom mentioned it? I couldn't remember.

"So what," Lisa said, "I'm not real?"

"No," Alec answered in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "You're a Shadow. Though I guess you're more real than most Shadows. That happens when they interact with people like me and the dweeb here." He gestured to me.

"Hey!" I protested.

Lisa looked like she was about to laugh in his face, but something stopped her before she made the first sound. She stood there, her mouth open. Then her face went pale, and she closed her mouth.

"People like us have power over Shadow," Alec explained. "You can slice it into any shape you like if you know how. Go anywhere you can imagine, find anything you want. Shape a whole damn universe according to your desire if you feel like it."

Holy shit. That explanation shocked me so much that I almost missed the way he'd referred to me. Like us, he said. "What am I to you?" I asked.

Alec shrugged. "Not sure. A cousin, maybe? Maybe an aunt, maybe a niece."

I practically rocked back on my heels. "What?"

"The design you saw in your dreams is called the Great Pattern of Amber. It's the key to our power over Shadow, and only people of our blood can walk it. If you want to gain control of that power, you're going to have to go there and walk the Pattern."

I stared at him. "What?" I asked again.

Brian looked like he didn't buy Alec's explanation of Shadow, and Bitch didn't care, but Lisa still looked disturbed.

"Break's over," Alec said before anyone else could speak. "Let's keep going."

We hit the water a few minutes later, and there was no avoiding it. We waded in and on, and it quickly rose to waist height. It became apparent that we were in a storm drain, and a few minutes after that we came to a ladder beneath a manhole, and once we were there we stopped for another minute or two.

I couldn't hear the sound of pursuit anymore, but that didn't mean we had lost it. Even so, I'd been thinking about what Alec had said, and while I found a certain pleasure in the thought that Emma, Madison, and Sophia weren't actually real, the idea that Dad was similarly unreal bothered me a lot. "Hey Regent?" I asked.

"Hmm?"

"Supposing what you said is true, and our - my - home universe and every other one and all the people who live there are created and sustained by the interaction between Amber and the Courts of Chaos. How does that make the universe and the people who live in it anything less than real?"

I was prepared to hear a philosophical argument. What I wasn't prepared for is what actually happened; Alec rolled his eyes. "Figures you'd be one of those," he said.

I stared at him, searching his face, trying to discern if he actually, really believed that people from what he called Shadow weren't really real; I found nothing in his expression that would contradict the assertion.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I shuddered.

We climbed the ladder and came out of a manhole in the middle of an empty street, and the light was blinding.

It took me a moment to get my bearings, another several for my eyes to adjust, but then I recognized our surroundings: we were in the Docks, in Brockton Bay. Not far away stood a half constructed building, the rusting skeleton of a crane abandoned on top of it, a silent monument to the economic downfall of Brockton Bay.

Almost as soon as I saw the building, I heard the barking. When she heard it, even exhausted as she was, a certain tension went out of Bitch's posture. She glanced at us once, and then strode purposefully toward the door.

We followed.

A sharp whistle came from inside the building, and the barking ceased. Bitch opened the door, and we followed her inside. When a second door leading further into the building was opened, there came a sharp whistle and a command of, "Sirius, Bentley, hurt."

I had time to see a half-finished room and somewhere around a dozen dogs standing silently around the local version of Bitch before two of them - each grown to the size of a mastiff - came rushing at us.

Black smoke began to curl around Brian's shoulders, and he tensed to receive a charge, but before anything else could happen, our Bitch whistled sharply and commanded, "Stay."

The charging dogs faltered. Their ears drooped, and they looked from one Bitch to the other.

"Hurt," the local Bitch ordered again even as our Bitch ordered, "Stay."

One of the dogs whined.

We followed Bitch through the door.

Cement was laid out over nearly half of the building interior, as the floor or foundation, but the work had been interrupted and abandoned partway through. There were areas where crushed stone had been laid out in preparation for the cement pour, and a combination of wind and rain had mixed regular dirt into the crushed stone a long time ago. Any spot inside the building that wasn't covered in concrete was marked by patches of grass and a few scraggy weeds.

The local version of Bitch stood across the empty shell of the building from us, glaring at us like she was seriously considering murder as a course of action, and our Bitch glared right back.

"I'm here for my dogs," our Bitch said.

"You think you can take them?" local Bitch snarled challengingly.

Our Bitch showed her teeth. "I know I can," she said. Her eyes went to the group of dogs crowded around her doppelganger, and after a moment they narrowed. "Brutus?" She asked. "Kuro? Bullet? Milk? Stumpy, Judas, Axel, Ginger?"

The local version of Bitch glared all the more fiercely. "Dead," she said.

"How?" our Bitch asked.

"Leviathan," the other answered.

Some of the tension went out of Bitch's posture, and a moment later the other mirrored her. Bitch's brow furrowed in thought. Smoke still curled around Brian, but none of us made a move to interfere.

"Brutus," Bitch said, "Angelica, come."

A Rottweiler started toward us, hesitated, looked at the local version of Bitch.

Local Bitch gestured.

The Rottweiler went over to us, his tail wagging, followed by a second dog, some kind of terrier that I recognized as Angelica. A third and fourth dog started to follow, but Bitch said, "Judas, stay."

The fourth dog stopped. The third seemed to be a second Angelica, and she was limping as she walked, and every movement seemed to pain her just a little. Bitch regarded Angelica's double, clipped a lead to her own Angelica's collar and then to Brutus', and then repeated herself: "Judas, stay."

Judas stopped, and so did the second Angelica.

Something in Bitch's doppelganger's body language eased. "You sure?" she asked.

Bitch nodded. "Take care of him."

Her double nodded back.

Then Bitch turned to the rest of us. "Let's go," she said.

We left the building in peace.

"Okay," Alec said. "We have the dogs. Can we go now?"

Bitch nodded.

"Yeah," I said.

"Finally," Alec muttered.

He led away down the street toward the flooded section, and I felt him begin to shift what I now knew was Shadow. The floodwaters receded. As we walked, the damage to the city grew less and less, and five minutes in, everything Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine had done to this future Brockton Bay was gone. Though it had been late afternoon only moments before, the eastern sky bloomed with the sunrise, and even the slums of Brockton Bay looked beautiful in the light of the dawn.

"We're here," Alec said, and everyone seemed to let out a breath they'd been holding.

I couldn't help that smile on my face that followed, and I hugged Lisa and started to move for Brian after before I could stop myself. He saw my hesitation and grinned, and his grin was beautiful and boyish, and I felt my cheeks coloring.

"Our place is still blown up," Alec pointed out.

"We can find another place," Brian said.

My thoughts turned to matters more arcane. To my power, to the means by which I might learn to control it. I looked to Alec, then, and I said his name. He looked my way. "I want you to take me to Amber," I said. "I want to walk the Pattern."

He gave me a sidelong glance. "Fuck you," he said.

A sense of outrage rose up in me, then, and I almost rounded on him. "I need to learn to control this," I said. "I can't keep going like I have been."

He thought about it. "I can't," he admitted after a moment.

"Why?"

"Politics," he said, making a dismissive gesture. "My dad's branch of the family isn't welcome there. If you came there with me, the best either of us would get is prison."

My heart sank. "I need to walk the Pattern," I told him.

"Yeah," he agreed. He thought for another few moments. "Amber isn't the only place you can do that," he said.

My brow furrowed. "What?"

"There are two mirrors of it. Two mirrors of Amber, two mirrors of the Pattern. We can try the one in Tir na Nog'th."

"Tir na Nog'th?" I echoed.

"There are three places you can walk the Pattern and gain mastery over Shadow," Alec explained. "Each is the same Pattern, and each has its dangers. Amber is closed to us, and so is Rebma - Amber's reflection in the sea - but we might be able to get into Tir na Nog'th: Amber's reflection in the sky. It'll be tricky, and the place is dangerous even if you aren't walking the Pattern..."

"Dangerous how?" I asked.

"Tir na Nog'th is weird. You might see distorted visions of the past or the future, you might be haunted by the ghosts of people you've betrayed, people you killed, people who betrayed you. Sometimes you can get useful information from it, sometimes it's all bullshit colored by what you wanted to find. Time can be weird there. The city might try to snare you in some enchantment. Hours can pass in what seems like minutes. All that would make it dangerous enough, but it also exists only as long as the moon shines on Amber, and trying it any other time is lethally stupid."

"Where does it go when the moon isn't up?" I asked.

"Fuck if I know," he said. "But there's a Pattern there when the moon is up, and I know a secret path that will take us there without us having to climb up from Kolvir." He held up a hand to forestall my obvious question. "That's the mountain that Amber's on. It's the easternmost peak of the Ardeni mountains.

"Tell us about this secret path," Lisa said.

Alec looked at her for a moment. The he shrugged. "Okay, so Tir na Nog'th has connections with most of the major Dreamlands. Technically, they're all Shadows of Tir na Nog'th, and they get more distorted the further you travel away from it. Usually the connection is one way, but I know a place where it goes both ways. A pool that glows silver when Tir na Nog'th is in the sky of Amber, and if you step into it while it's glowing, you end up in this big fountain in the grand square in front of the palace."

"Okay," I said. "Where's the pool?"

"Hang on," Brian said. "I can't go on some quest to fantasy land so Taylor can walk this Pattern. I have responsibilities here, and I can't leave them."

"Not leaving my dogs," Bitch agreed.

"Well, I'm going," Lisa said. "I wouldn't miss this for the world. But what do you say we leave off on the trip until tomorrow? We can all get some rest, pack some supplies, make sure we aren't leaving any loose ends."

I could see that. I guess. I reluctantly agreed.

"Great," Lisa said.

"I'm going, too," said a voice I didn't recognize from right behind me, and I almost jumped out of my skin.

There was a girl behind me, about the same age as me, and she was beautiful. She and dark skin, high cheekbones, a long neck, flawless skin, impressive assets, and a purple streak in her black hair; she had a backpack on, and she wore denim shorts over neon green fishnet leggings and a strapless white top, and when he saw her, Brian's jaw dropped open.

"Ai-Aisha!?" he spluttered. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The girl cackled. "That look," she said. "That right there, it makes the whole thing worth it."

Brian's face flushed. "What the hell, Aisha? How did you find us?"

"Followed you from Coil's base," she said.

The implications of that statement sank in, and Brian muttered, "Oh, fuck."

I might have stayed to listen on, but at that moment I saw the best, greatest, and most beautiful thing I had seen all day: a public restroom. I said my goodbyes, promised to meet Lisa for lunch, and sprinted over to the place I could find relief.

I guess it kind of put the whole thing in perspective.


	8. Hell-Rider

**To Walk in Shadow**  
(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

Hell-Rider

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

She always Hell-Rides when she travels. She knows how to do it properly, how to make the changes smooth as silk, easy as slipping into a warm bath, but she hasn't done it that way since the Shadow-games she played with her brother when they were both children. Something in her recoils from it; it bores her, seeing Shadow change with all the dull, stately regularity of counting down the numbers on highway exit signs. The Hell-Ride exacts a price, but it's one she will gladly pay, and if she were being honest she would admit that she hardly notices that price anymore.

She is rarely honest; least of all with herself.

She rides her horse along a winding deer trail through yellow grass, then brown, then yellow atop undulating hills: convex, concave, convex, concave, and the path a ribbon of light in gathering gloom. Beyond the shifting hills, a silver desert, and she rests on the other side for a time, letting her horse gnaw on the brown grass that grows sparsely at the desert's edge. Food and water, and then three days journey across the silver desert as the distant spires of a brass city grow ever closer; the spires unfold and collapse as she follows the path, and the strange inhabitants howl to drive away a silent wind, and they pay her no mind.

On.

The desert blooms. Purple grass beneath an acetylene sun gives way to a maple forest with tongues for leaves that slither in the wind with gossamer strands of iridescent saliva hanging like a ten thousand little corpses from their little gallows.

The world shifts. The path rejoins it. Stars bloom in an alien sky, sprouting, growing, flowering, withering, dying, and on and on, until pomegranate stars unfold like origami swans and fly to the corners of the universe, gathering into galaxies of light that do not remember the dawn.

Determinism bleeds into the world. Scent returns, and then touch and cold; the air is crisp and cold with the promise of a lingering winter and smells faintly of smog and smoke. The traveler continues on the winding path that is the only constant in her journey. The maple trees are only maple trees now, and the sun sinking in the western sky casts campfire sparks against the clouds, gold and purple and pink and grey, and the path a winding deer trail descending from the foothills with the ocean snapping into life and motion to the east, the sea-salt tang adding its own scent to the air.

A city fills the space that was empty land a moment ago, and the journey comes to its end.

She paused there, tasting the air and looking about to see what she might have brought with her through Shadow. Then the traveler smiled, and guided her zebra-striped horse down the deer trail and into the outskirts of Brockton Bay.

People stared when she passed, but only briefly. Most assumed she was a cape, maybe one who thought their powers magic. On she went, the sound of hoof on concrete echoing in the gathering twilight as she moved into the Docks.

She stopped at last in front of the smoldering ruin of a red brick factory with a massive sliding door, once locked shut by a length of chain, now warped and dented and lying ajar. It had been large, once: half a block long, three stories tall, and a faded sign atop it that read, 'Redmond Welding', but the sign was gone now, and what little remained of the roof had been transformed to a strangely reddish, heat-warped glass.

A young man was waiting for her by the side entrance. He was more pretty than handsome, and lanky. He had black curly hair, and he wore a white tunic over dark designer pants. He bore a black ring on his left hand, the letter delivered to him by the bird of her desire was clutched in his right. His eyes narrowed when he saw her. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

The traveler smiled. "Don't be like that, Jean-Paul," she said. "Can't a girl visit her brother in Shadow with no ulterior motive but that she seeks the pleasure of his company?"

The young man - Jean-Paul - was not impressed, and she almost laughed to see the look on his face. "It's Alec now," he said. "Why are you here, Cherie? Did the old man send you?"

She shook her head. "Daddy? No. I went my own way." A smile touched her lips but not her eyes. "Do you remember those days of darkness some years ago?"

He did; of course he did. He had to. It was the darkness, the storm of Chaos that had passed through all of Shadow in one form or another which had allowed his escape, after all, disrupting the constructs and obstacles their father had set to guard all roads that led away. Jean-Paul had been the first of them to leave their family's estate, and he had done it then.

"It's been more years for me than for you," he said, "but I remember."

"I can see that," she said, looking him up and down approvingly. "You're filling out surprisingly well, little brother."

He didn't rise to the bait. Didn't react at all. It was a little disappointing to someone who had come from her own private Shadow where she was universally loved, universally adored.

She went on with the business at hand. "You know how long it takes for any news to reach us," she said, "but I've finally an answer for it." She drew out the words, savoring sound and silence both.

"Oh?" he asked.

"There is a new King in Amber."

That got his attention. There was a multitude of tiny changes in his expression that someone who didn't know him might not have even noticed. He thought about it for a moment, and then he asked, "Why don't you come in, and we'll talk about it?"

"Are your little friends around?" she asked.

"No."

"Then yes."

He stood up, opened the door.

She followed him into the burned out ruin. As they stepped across the threshold and through Shadow, they came into that same building undamaged, whole, and empty; Alec led her up the stairs from the factory floor to the loft, poured wine, broke bread, and they talked through the dusk, through the night, and into the small hours of the morning.


	9. 2,1 - Pattern

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

2.1 - Pattern

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

Home.

Across the multiverse I had come some little way. Another world, a five minute walk distant, where I held power over arthropods and served a villain's ambition as an Undersider, and I had many questions; we had not stayed long enough to learn the answers. I was missing the context. I didn't even know if that other Taylor's dad was alive or dead after Shatterbird's attack, and I was going home.

It was dark, and I was still in Skitter's costume sans mask, and I didn't want people to see me, so I crept along in what I was sure was an inconspicuous and sneaky manner, avoiding working street lights as best I could. The trash cans were all out at the curbs, and that worried me; it meant I had lost at least a day to my adventure in the other universe. It had been April 30 when I left, and I wondered what the date was now. No matter. If I could just get home without anyone seeing me, I was sure it would be all right.

"Taylor?" asked an elderly woman's voice.

Shit.

"Taylor Hebert?"

I turned. I'd made it as far as the house next to mine, and here was white-haired Mrs. Henrick taking a bulging plastic trash bag to the can at the curb. The flower beds in her yard were lovely even by the light of a crescent moon, and through her kitchen window I could see Mr. Henrick doing the dishes. I hadn't spoken to either of them since before Mom died, but Mrs. Henrick had been my first grade teacher, and they used to pay me five dollars every weekend to mow their lawn.

"Hi, Mrs. Henrick," I said.

"Your father's been worried sick, my dear," she said.

"I know," I said, uncomfortably aware of my costume. She noticed it; her eyes went to it, but she didn't ask about it. "I was just on my way home," I told her.

The sharp-eyed old woman seemed to come to some conclusion. "Has everything been all right at home?" she asked. "If that's why you ran away…"

My heart sank. It seemed I'd lost more than a day, though whether I'd lost it to time dilation from Bakuda's bomb or to something as simple as a different rate of time between this universe and the other one I had no idea. "No," I said, shaking my head. "No, I didn't… everything is okay at home. It's…" I debated how much, if anything, to tell her, and I decided on little. "I've been having a hard time at school is all," I said.

Her eyes softened. "Okay," she said. "But if you ever need someone to talk to, for any reason, you're always welcome in my home."

I smiled at her. "Thanks, Mrs. Henrick," I said.

"You'd best be getting home," she said.

"That's where I'm going," I said.

We parted ways, and I'm pretty sure she watched me to be sure of where I was going; when I walked up the steps - stepping over the rotten middle one - and opened my front door, she seemed satisfied, and went back into her house.

I went into mine.

Home. Such a simple word for such a complicated thing. It had been less of a home since Mom died, and we were less without her. It didn't have that almost indescribable feeling of warmth and security anymore. It felt emptier. But here I was: home again home again, jiggity jig.

Dad was asleep sitting up on the couch in the living room, the telephone clutched in his hands, and a bunch of PRT informational packets - the kind for parents of parahuman kids - on the coffee table. He looked like hell. There were dark circles under his eyes, his clothes were a mess, and he smelled like he hadn't showered in days. The dirt made the lines on his face seem deeper, his hair was uncombed, and his hairline looked just a tiny bit thinner than I remembered.

I was tempted to let him sleep. He clearly needed it, and avoiding the collision, the confrontation sounded like a fine idea to me. I decided that I would change out of this costume before I woke him, and I went up the stairs and opened the door to my room as quietly as I could manage. He was still sleeping when I came back to the living room a few minutes later dressed in a more normal black jeans and a grey blouse.

"Hey," I said.

Dad's eyes shot open. "Wha-" he cut off mid-word. His eyes went wide, and he seemed to take a moment to decide if I was real. "Taylor?" he breathed.

"Hi Dad," I said in a small voice.

He was on his feet in an instant, the phone clattering noisily to the floor as it fell from his hands, and he hugged me tightly, and for that one moment, everything was okay.

"Oh my God, Taylor," he said. "I thought you…" he cut off that sentence, too. "What happened? Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

"I'm not hurt," I said. "And it's kind of a long story."

"Tell me," he said.

We sat down, and I did. I glossed over some of the details, but I told him about meeting the Undersiders, about Lung's ambush, Bakuda's bomb, winding up in the other universe. I told him about the other Taylor Hebert, how were were captured by the other Undersiders, and how Regent got us out and took us home.

When the story was done, I watched the play of emotions in his eyes. He was holding my hand through the entire story, and it seemed to me that I could almost feel his fear, his terror, worry, anxiety, his relief at my safe return, the simmering anger beneath the surface for the people who had put me in danger, for me, and most of all for the ABB. "I want you to join the Wards," he said.

I withdrew my hand from his, and the immediacy of my sympathy for his feelings withered with the broken contact. That… seemed really abrupt and random. "What?" I asked. "No."

His eyes narrowed. "They can help you, Taylor. They've got experience teaching parahumans how to use their powers responsibly, making sure they learn in a safe, constructive environment."

"I'm not joining the Wards, Dad." I didn't tell him that it was because I intend to murder Lung as soon as I was able to pull it off.

"You almost died," he said, his tone harsh and uncompromising. "The ABB almost killed you. Again. This is the second time that's happened in a month." His eyes flashed, his voice gaining intensity. "For eight days," he said, "EIGHT DAYS, I didn't know where my daughter was. I was terrified that you were dead. The Wards can keep you safe, and give me at least some assurance that my daughter is alive and safe instead of having to sit up every night wondering if tonight is the night you come home in a body bag."

Anger rose in me, but simultaneous with that came a kind of understanding. The image of his bloody, glass-shredded bed flashed before my eyes. I could almost see the trail of blood leading down the stairs and out the door to the front yard. I understood how he felt, because I had felt it too. But I think I had it worse than he did, because along with what I had felt when I'd thought that he was dead, before I'd really, truly known that I had come to another universe and not to my own future, I had discovered that my own father was… temporary. That he wouldn't always be there for me. That in some little time, he would be gone.

Life was such a fragile thing. So easily destroyed, so much required to preserve, so difficult to create. I had known that before, but this was the first time I had felt it, too.

"I can't," I told him. "The Wards, the Protectorate, they can't help me. There's something I can do to gain control of my power, but I have to go away again if I'm going to do it."

"What? Absolutely not. I just got you back. Why can't the Protectorate help you?"

"They have no idea how to," I said.

"How long do you plan to leave for, this time?" he asked, and the anger was still there, tinged now with a bitter sense of betrayal.

"I don't know," I answered. "A week. Maybe two. It depends on how quickly time passes where we're going relative to here."

"You can't just go away for two weeks, Taylor."

"I have to," I said.

"Why?" He all but shouted the question. "Tell me. Explain it to me, Taylor. Tell me why you need to leave for two more weeks while I sit up every night wondering if you're even alive."

My own anger was rising. We were alike in that. Slow to anger, but explosive once it came loose. "Do you know what my power is, Dad?"

"You're a Brute," he said. "Strong, tough, and you heal."

"No," I said. "That's not it."

"What, then?"

"The Brute package is just a side-effect of being what I am," I said. "My real power lets me change reality."

Dad hadn't been expecting me to say that. He waited for me to explain.

"You know all the PRT power classifications, right?"

He nodded.

"I guess you could call me a Mover and a Shaker. The easiest way I can explain it is to say that my power lets me go anywhere and find anything. I can… add or subtract things from the universe. And I have almost no control over it."

"What?" Dad asked.

"I'll show you," I said, and I stood up, thinking immediately of what I might be able to demonstrate. "Go up to my room and look under my bed, okay?"

He frowned, but he did it. When he came back down, he looked impatient. "There's nothing under your bed, Taylor," he said.

"Good," I said. "Now, follow me."

I walked up the stairs, focusing, trying to change the world around me to fit what I remembered, and for a few seconds it was like trying to get a grip on a slippery glass surface. Then Dad went ghostly and transparent, fading more and more, and he asked, "Taylor? What's happening?"

In a panic, I retraced my steps, focusing only on him, on stopping him from disappearing into… whatever was happening. When he was solid again, my heart thudded in my ears, and I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "Sorry," I said.

"What was that?" he asked. "You were… everything started to fade away."

"I told you I was bad at this," I told him.

"Is this safe?" he asked.

I nodded. "Should be."

I tried changing just one detail at a time, then. The glass on the floor. Trail of blood leading down the stairs. Pictures all gone from the walls. Then the lights went out, and Dad cursed and went to the hall closet, and I had to make a small shift back towards home to make sure that the flashlight he pulled out actually worked and wasn't shattered like I knew the ones here would be. He clicked on the flashlight and stopped short, taking note of the bloody trail and the glass. He made a quick circuit of the house, and then came back up to me with eyes wide. "What the hell is going on?" he asked. "It looks like someone might have died in my bed! God, there's so much blood."

"I brought us to that other universe," I said. "Check under my bed."

He did, and he drew out the briefcase that I'd left there. The one Tattletale had given me. I took it from him and opened it, showing the money. Then I closed it again and picked it up, clutching the handle in my right hand. "Believe me now?" I asked.

He looked frightened, and I didn't like seeing fear in his eyes. "You can get us home, right?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. "Follow me."

We went back down the stairs, and nothing changed. We made a circuit of the house, and the world stubbornly refused to alter. "Something wrong?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No, no, everything's… fine." We went down to the basement.

"Is there some reason you can't do this standing still?" he asked.

"It only works if I'm moving," I said. The world continued to not change.

"Damn but that's a lot of spiders," Dad said. He paused. "Are those black widows?" Another brief pause. "Taylor, go back up the stairs," he said, and his voice suddenly held the urgency of fear.

A shape was moving in the dark. Dad immediately turned his flashlight on it, but the darkness refused to yield to his light. The temperature dropped precipitously, and a cold mist seemed to gather about our feet. Then a pair of gleaming eyes opened in those shadows, and the smooth, cultured voice of Pyewacket said, "We meet again, Ms. Ess."

I bolted, and Dad was right behind me. My heart was racing as my feet pounded up those stairs. The lights came on ahead of me as I ran, as the world shifted slightly. I cleared the doorway, then Dad came out and flung the basement door closed behind him and locked it tight. We were home again, in our own universe, and a cold sweat was beading on my forehead.

"What was that?" Dad asked.

I shook my head. "Something bad."

He was silent for moment, but he noticed our changed surroundings. The glass was unbroken once more, and the lights were on, and the coffee table was covered with those PRT informational packets. "Are we home now? Are we… back?"

I nodded. "We're back. Sorry. I told you I wasn't very good at controlling it."

He stared at me, and I wondered what he was thinking. "Is whatever that was still down in our basement?" he asked.

I looked at the closed door. "We could check?" It wasn't really a question, but I phrased it like one.

He made no move to open the door.

"Where exactly do you need to go to learn to control your power?" Dad asked.

"To a place called Tir Na Nog'th," I told him. "It's in a faraway universe, but we're going in through a back door. Once we're there, I have to go down into a cave beneath the city and walk the Pattern."

"And if you go and walk across some pattern in a cave, it lets you control your powers?" Dad asked. Something in his tone told me he found this proposition to be somewhat dubious.

I nodded. "I know what it sounds like," I told him. "Believe me, I know it sounds crazy. But this is something I have to do. I won't be safe otherwise."

"Where's this back door?" he asked.

"Wonderland," I answered.

He looked at me like he wasn't sure if I was serious. "You're serious?" he asked. "That exists?"

I nodded. "Everything exists. I told you. I can go anywhere and find anything."

"Okay," he said. "If this is something you have to do, then I'm coming, too."

His statement took me completely by surprise. It was one of the most baffling things I'd ever heard. "What? Why?"

The anger returned to his voice. "Because I'm your father," he said. "If you're going on some dangerous journey to learn how to control your powers, then I should be there to help you."

"But… but you can't help me, Dad," I told him, and almost as soon as the words had passed my lips, I wished I could take them back, because I couldn't have hurt him more badly if I'd shot him.

Anger rushed in to fill the wound I'd made, and things got heated again. Dad and I hadn't really been talking since Mom died. We'd let a lot of things fester, and it all came out that night. We argued. We lost our tempers. I'm pretty sure I screamed at him, and we both said hurtful things that we shouldn't have. In the end I stormed into my room, slammed the door, and locked it shut behind me. It was a childish thing to do, but at the time it seemed like the only thing I could do.

Afterward, I decided that I didn't want to sleep in that house. Half of it was because of the fight, but the other half was the thought that maybe the thing in the basement could have followed us back, might be waiting for us down there even now.

I drifted off just the same.

* * *

Dad was already gone when I got up the next morning. There wasn't a note, and he hadn't made breakfast, and the briefcase sat unopened on the kitchen table. The door to the basement was still locked, and after I was clean and dressed, I unlocked it, opened it and went down the stairs. There was no sign of anything that shouldn't have been there, and no melodious voices spoke to me from the darkness.

I went back upstairs, and I closed and locked the door again.

It was Monday, but I didn't bother to go to school. Instead, I ate breakfast and then packed up everything I thought I might need for the journey: several changes of clothes, hiking boots, an extra pair of shoes, soap, my toothbrush and toothpaste, dental floss, shampoo and conditioner, my makeup case, a bag of trail mix, a bag of beef jerky, a large canteen, a swiss army knife, pepper spray, a loaf of bread still in its package, three apples, two bananas, and a block of cheddar cheese. I packed it all into the hiking backpack that I used to take with me to Nature Camp.

By the time I was done, Lisa was at the door.

Her hair was in a tight braid, there was a line of freckles across her nose, and her bottle-green eyes all but sparkled above her grin when I opened the door. "Hey, Taylor," she said.

I smiled, and I forced all the dark feelings lingering from last night down into some tiny corner of my heart where they wouldn't bother me. "Hey," I said.

She looked concerned, and I wasn't sure why. "Everything okay?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered. "So where did you have in mind?"

Where she had in mind, as it turned out, was Fugly Bob's. It was this part-restaurant, part-bar, part-shack at the edge of the Lord's Market, overlooking the beach, and it was the sort of place with burgers so greasy that if you ordered takeout, you could see through the bag by the time you got home. Their specialty burger was called the Fugly Bob Challenger, and if you could finish it, you didn't have to pay for it. But that wasn't what we were here for. Most people came to Fugly Bob's for greasy fast food, but Lisa ordered the grilled snapper and an order of crabcakes to split before I had a chance to say anything, and when it arrived I was a little shocked both by how delicious it was and how non-greasy it was. Had I misjudged Fugly Bob's?

"I really need to take you shopping some time," Lisa said. "Update your wardrobe."

"What's wrong with my wardrobe?"

"Nothing," she said. "It's just very… you."

I raised an eyebrow. "Very me?"

"Do you own anything that isn't black, grey, or brown?" Lisa asked.

I thought about it. "I have a few pairs of blue jeans, and some white shirts," I said.

She smirked. "There you go. There's nothing wrong with it, you just like a more muted style. You blend in. But I wonder what it might be like if you dropped your guard, started being bolder, improvising."

I shook my head. "I don't know."

"I think you might surprise everyone. Even yourself."

I didn't really know what to say to that, so I shrugged.

"Something for another day," Lisa said with a sigh. "For now, we need to pick up supplies for the trip. Are you packed?"

I nodded, taking another bite of fish, and it was just as good as the first. "What I have won't be enough, but it's a start."

Hadn't there been more fish on our plates a second ago? I looked around, but there was no sign of anyone who might have taken it.

Lisa noticed, too. She got a puzzled look on her face. Then she glanced left and right. She recognized something, and I followed her gaze to see Brian standing in the middle of Fugly Bob's looking like he'd forgotten something.

"Brian?" Lisa called out to him.

He came over to us. "Hey," he said.

"What are you doing here?" Lisa asked.

"I'm…" he trailed off, frowned. "I don't remember."

Someone giggled, but it didn't seem important. I reached for my fork and found it missing. All at once, a pair of African-American teenage girls were there with us, each of them laughing, each of them physically identical. Twins? They were beautiful enough to make me jealous, but the way they dressed and presented themselves had to have been deliberately calculated to be as trashy as possible. It was like…the girls were a Van Gogh, and their clothes and style were putting that Van Gogh in a picture frame made out of the tackiest Thomas Kinkade paintings imaginable. It was a strange feeling, to have my envy so thoroughly intermixed with what was almost offense.

Then it clicked where I'd seen at least one of them before. Aisha Laborn. Brian's sister. And Aisha's alternate-universe twin. They hadn't so much appeared as they just hadn't been something I could have noticed before, and nobody in Fugly Bob's except for Brian had reacted to it. One Aisha had my fork in her mouth, and was chewing on a bite of my lunch, and my eyes narrowed.

"Wow, that's pretty good," the first Aisha said. Then the other Aisha stole a bite and said, "Other me isn't kidding. What did you two order?"

Focus came back into Brian's bearing, and he gave a long-suffering sigh. "Lisa, you need to help me," he said.

"With what?" she asked.

It was just me, Lisa, and Brian at the table, and my plate was empty. Brian looked confused. Then he looked annoyed. Then I realized the girls were still there. They cackled, and my eyes watered a little.

"This is a nightmare," Brian muttered. "They've been doing this to me since yesterday."

"When did your sister Trigger?" Lisa asked in a low voice. The buzz of conversation around us masked the content of ours from anyone who might have tried to overhear.

"I don't know if she did. But she had the power when I got home yesterday. She was staying at my place, and…" He trailed off. "Where did they go?"

"Who?" I asked.

Brian seemed unfocused again, then he recovered and slowly lowered his forehead to the table. "Help," he said.

"Alec didn't take her home, huh?" I asked.

Brian shook his head. "No. And I don't think the world is ready for two Aishas."

"Nobody's ready for two Aishas," one of them said. "Our chief weapon is surprise!" the second added. "Fear and surprise," the first corrected.

"Maybe if you just tell them that one of them can go with us, they'll stop annoying you so much," Lisa suggested.

Brian scowled. "Absolutely not. I'd never let my sister do something like that, and until I can get her home, I'm responsible for the Aisha from the other world, too."

"Our chief weapons are fear and surprise," the second Aisha said.

Lisa shrugged. "Come on, Taylor. Let's go shopping."

That seemed like, if not a fine idea, at least a better idea than this. I shot Brian a sympathetic smile and a helpless shrug. Then we paid for our food and left him with his sister and her alternate-universe double.

* * *

We were done by two, and Lisa and I had our backpacks packed and met Alec at that same park where I'd first encountered Bitch, where I'd met the Undersiders. It just seemed to make sense to use it again. Alec arrived riding on the back of a russet horse. He didn't have a pack, but saddlebags on the horse. His clothing was still white and black, and he nodded when he saw us. "Can you ride?" he asked.

I hadn't ridden a horse in forever. There'd been a time when I'd gone through a horse obsession as a little girl, and mom had taken me to learn at an actual equestrian center for professional riders, but my horse phase had mostly died away since the end of Middle School, and the last time I'd actually ridden on one was when I was at that nature camp just before the accident.

Emma had only briefly been involved in the horse obsession. Memories came to me. I was eleven, and Emma I had gone to a horse ranch as part of a school field trip. I remember that she'd stepped in horse poop with her brand new shoes, and when she realized it she'd cried for almost an hour. I'd stayed with her through the whole thing, comforting her, helping her to wash it off. By the time we were done and she'd stopped crying, it was time to go home.

"I know how," I said, "but it's been a few years."

Lisa shook her head. "I can't," she said.

He nodded. "Come on," he said, and his horse began slow walk down the path toward the parking lot that was easy enough to keep up with.

There was a green wagon with a second horse hitched to it that I was certain hadn't been there when we'd passed by that spot on the way in, but Alec went to it like he expected it to be there. He dismounted and hitched his horse to it beside the other. Lisa and I climbed in the back, and Alec sat at the front. A car swerved to avoid us, and then the horses began to trot, and the wheels began to turn, and our journey began.

It all looked normal at first. Just an ordinary day in a bad part of town. The salt smell of the ocean lingering in the air. The faintest whiff of trash. As we moved along the road, the houses grew closer together and the road became narrower. We crossed a bridge over a noisy creek, and on the other side the sky changed, shifting first into turquoise and then continuing to change until it was green as a Christmas light. A red sun burned sullenly in the sky, and the whole world seemed overgrown with a peculiar biological growth, like moss that was made from meat and carpeting everything. There were spores in the air, and I held my breath until they vanished.

We rounded a corner, and the sky was a normal color again, and the meat moss was gone, and people were in the streets once more. The road became brick, and it began to wind its way toward the crest of a hill on which a Victorian-style church stood, white wood walls and black roofed with high steeple. Voices lifted in song came to us on the wind, but I didn't recognize the tune. Presently the song faded and all I could hear was the birds and the sound of hoof on brick.

We crested the hill and came into view of a long, narrow canyon with steep rocky walls; the road went through the middle of it, and sounds echoed strangely within. Hours passed, but that didn't seem to matter to the position of the sun, which changed seemingly at random along with the sky. Once there were even two suns, both of them a piercing blue so bright that even with my eyes closed it hurt to look.

We stopped beneath a normal-seeming sky at an inn on the banks of a river, gas lamps burning in the windows. Alec ordered for us in a language I didn't understand, and we were shown to a table in the dining room where we ate a meal of unfamiliar root vegetables and some kind of rich-tasting bird with a watered-down wine to drink. I started to ask for water, but Lisa stopped me saying it wouldn't be safe and to stick with the wine.

I'd never cared for wine, and their toilet was a hole in the ground with a seat above it, and it stank badly.

We left the inn and continued on for what my watch said was six hours of shifting scenery, and still the light was good and the sun was high. Alec finally let the sun set an hour after that, and we stopped at another roadside inn, this one with electricity and running water and people dressed in the styles of the 1930s.

The next morning, we set off shortly after sunrise and continued until the brick road gave way to dirt at a T intersection. There we turned right, and by degrees the land grew barren around us, more and more arid, and the temperature rose until it was uncomfortably warm. There was conversation at times. Lisa wanted to know all about my life, and I was willing to tell her some of it, and she was able to guess the rest. She told me a little about herself and her job, what it was like to work as a supervillain, the fun of being able to do as you please, and my smile grew as we talked. Sometimes we walked beside the cart, sometimes we rode in it.

A second day of travel passed us by, and I was beginning to feel like I needed a shower, but there was none to be found. Our surroundings looked like Arizona, now, and the hills were streaked with brown and red and tan, and what few plants grew were bedraggled things well suited to the hot, dry climate. At the end of that second day, we camped out beneath the stars, and purple auroras danced in the sky above us. I fell asleep almost instantly, and I did not stir until someone shook my shoulder some time later.

It was still night, and unfamiliar stars burned in the heavens, but the purple auroras had grown dim. There was a dry wind that carried with it the smell of something dead, and I sat up and looked about. "What is it?" I asked.

The others were awake. Lisa had a small pistol and was holding it but didn't have her finger on the trigger. Alec had his scepter in one hand and put a finger to his lips with the other. "We're not alone," he whispered.

There was a noise in the darkness like something between a howl and the sound of a boiling teakettle. Alec traced a circle in the dirt around the camp and spoke strange words over it. "Don't cross that line," he told us.

"Why not?" I asked.

"If you do, you'll be killed and eaten."

I looked about in the darkness and caught movement but could discern no details beyond the fact that there was more than one of whatever it was "What are they?" I asked.

"Ghouls," Alec said. "Strange to see them above ground. There must be a nest nearby."

"What's keeping them from crossing that line?" Lisa asked.

"Magic," Alec replied.

Lisa almost laughed, but her humor vanished quickly. "You're serious," she said.

Alec nodded. "We should be fine. Try to get some sleep if you can." Then he crawled back into his bedroll and put word to action.

I sat beside Lisa, staring out into the dark. "Ghouls," I said, and she shuddered.

We saw movement occasionally. Eyes gleaming in the dark. Strange, furtive sounds and something like snuffling.

Neither of us were able to go back to sleep that night.

The next day, I was certain we were being followed. Alec said that ghouls would die if they came out into the sunlight, but the feeling remained. Our surroundings grew dryer and bleaker still, and then, some hours into the day's journey, I caught sight of a something gleaming in the distance, scattering the sunlight in a prismatic rainbow.

All at once, the smell of death rolled up around us. The horses screamed and reared, and Alec cursed.

It came up from the ground like a miasma that formed into solid tendrils and then more definite shapes. It was a flowing, uncertain thing writhing in a rough sphere around a central mass, continually bubbling and oozing new pieces of itself that spread yet further, somewhere between liquid and monster.

Lisa drew her gun, sighted in on the central mass, and pulled the trigger. It was loud. There was a flare of light when the bullet hit the thing, and the creature, whatever it was, recoiled. Then it twisted its body impossibly fast and sent a writhing limb out at Lisa with a sound like the crack of a whip. She cried out, and blood flowed from the side of her head.

The limb swept back into position. By then, Alec had the horses calmed. He dismounted and strode toward us. The creature sent another whip-crack strike, this time at me. I tried to anticipate it, but it struck me in the belly, and it knocked the air out of my lungs. I fell, and then the limb split as though someone had just cut it in half with a sword or an axe.

A spluttering shriek-whistle-teakettle sound rose up from a dozen beaked mouths around the creature's central mass, and it moved, using its limbs to pull itself along stupendously fast. It didn't find whatever had struck it, and after another moment, a savage-looking cut seemed to rip itself open on a second of the thing's limbs.

Alec spoke three words, and his hands passed through a set of complex movements so quickly that he might as well have been a native speaker of American Sign Language. There was a roar like thunder, a shimmering of heat, and then the creature fled howling into the desert.

I lay there gasping for a time. "What the hell," I said once I was able to speak. "What the hell." I checked myself over for injuries and found none.

"Servitor. A strong one." He held up his hands as if something hung between them and examined me through them. "Huh. You've been marked."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I mean the creature's master must have placed a mark on you," Alec said. "He can probably track you anywhere in Shadow."

My thoughts went immediately to Pyewacket, and I grit my teeth. Had he been the one to send this Servitor? If so, why? And more importantly: "How do I get this mark off of me?"

Alec shrugged. "There's a couple ways. Walking the Pattern is one. No prior mystical connection or attunement will survive that."

"Great," I said.

Lisa starting moaning and trying to sit up. I went to her and took a look at the injury. I had to use some of our water to clean it enough to be able to tell the size of it. There was a lot of blood, but it had all come from a narrow gash along the side of her temple. A grazing hit. I bandaged it as best I could, and by the time I was done, Lisa was coherent again.

"Ow," she muttered.

"Something was attacking that thing," I said. "Was that you?"

Alec shook his head. He looked around, then held up his hands again and looked through them, but he didn't find anything. "Hey Aisha, is that you?" he asked.

Aisha? Oh hell. I didn't know exactly what her power was, but it was obvious she was some kind of Stranger, and if she had been following us this entire time…

I abruptly realized that she was leaning against the side of the wagon with a big fire-axe swung over her shoulders, its blade tipped with dark ichor. She looked inordinately pleased with herself. "Happy to see me?" she asked.

I thought about it. "Actually," I said, "Yes."

She grinned and set about to cleaning her axe.

"Did the other Aisha come, too, or is it just you?" Lisa asked.

Aisha laughed. "What other Aisha?" she asked. "There's only one of me."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "Does Brian know you're here?"

"By now, probably," Aisha said. "Been a couple days. Regent takes the best vacations. A little weird to see him so assertive, but not bad weird." She winked.

Alec gave Aisha a considering look, and the tiniest hint of a smile played at the corner of his lips.

It took several minutes before we were moving again, but Aisha stayed in our view this time. An hour later, the object we'd seen was much larger, and I could just make out the shape of a huge gate made of crystal. Another forty minutes brought us right up to it, and I marveled at its beauty.

The gate stood alone in a land of utter desolation: nothing but dry, cracked, parched brown earth and a handful of long-dead windswept trees that hadn't the good sense to fall over when life had left them. They lingered on as ghosts, dry branches rattling softly in a desert wind. Above these spectres the great crystal gate reared, resplendent in the dusty sun, rising above the dead land with the sort of regal grandeur that belonged in the palaces of kings. But no walls contained what lay beyond that gate, and if ever there was a building here, no sign of it remained. Through the gate I could see a free-standing mirror, twelve feet tall and gleaming with reflected light. I walked a circuit around the gate and found that the mirror was gone once I had walked past the archway to where I might see where it should stand, and it returned to my view when I came again to the place where I had begun and looked once more through the gateway.

"Is this it?" I asked.

"Welcome," Alec answered, "to the gates of Wonderland."

"Why is it like this?" Aisha asked.

"Like what?" Alec asked.

"Dead," Aisha clarified.

"It has to be," Alec said. "The life is all in there." He gestured toward the mirror. "We're outside Wonderland."

The bone wind rattled dead branches. A dust storm was moving in from the south. The sun grew redder as it approached, but we followed Alec through the gateway and came to stand before the looking glass.

The mirror gate reflected only me.

"What the hell?" Aisha asked, brow furrowed as she gazed at the mirror.

"What do you see?" Lisa asked.

"Me, but…" Aisha trailed off.

Lisa looked into the mirror. "Let me guess. Each of us can only see our own reflection?"

I nodded, and Aisha did, too.

"The reflection's wrong, though," Aisha said. "I'm not like that."

"Like what?" I asked.

Before Aisha had a chance to answer, Alec walked into the mirror and vanished like a stone dropped into a pond. Concentric ripples spread across the surface and then faded.

Lisa, Aisha, and I exchanged uneasy glances.

"I don't think you're supposed to like what you see," Lisa said. She wasn't looking at the mirror, but anywhere else.

The dust storm drew closer. I could taste it on the warm wind.

"Fuck it," Aisha said, and stepped through the mirror.

"See you on the other side," Lisa said. Then she, too, went through the mirror, and I was alone with my reflection.

The girl on the other side of the mirror was a broken thing. Her arm was gone, but that was only part of it. There was a deathly exhaustion in the way she carried herself; her eyes were fixed on the middle distance, and her costume was torn and bloody. She was me, but she was a few years older and a few inches taller. She wore a black bodysuit with white armored panels. The lenses of her mask had been white, but they were broken now, and the look on her face sent me into an involuntary shudder.

I closed my eyes, and the only sound was the bone wind and the rattling branches. I opened them again and regarded myself. "What happened to you?" I wondered aloud.

A cracked, nearly inhuman voice that I could barely recognize as my own answered from the mirror: "Necessity."

I stared at her, my pulse quickening, and a sensation of dread began to crawl down my spine. "What?" I asked, but she didn't reply. "What do you mean by that?" I asked, angrier, more frightened, more insistent.

Silence.

"Answer me!"

She turned her head to look at me, and the movement was wrong, more like something a bird or a lizard might make than a person, and I looked away.

There were no answers in the Mirror Gate: only reflection.

The wind grew stronger, more biting. The sun was red as blood, now, and the sky was a murky brown haze.

I steeled myself and walked through the looking glass.


	10. 2,2 - Pattern

**To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

2.2 - Pattern

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading

* * *

I stepped out of the mirror and into another world where everything was just a little more. The colors were more vibrant, the sky a deeper blue, the sun brighter, the shadows darker. I was standing within a broad declivity at the bottom of which flowed a noisy stream in a broad curve, coming to us from the north and flowing away westward. Green grass spotted with puppy-headed flowers ran up the slope, and the flowers wagged their leaves and bounced on their stalks with such exuberance that their roots shook up the ground beneath them. Across the stream a riparian woodland rapidly ascended, and trees grew thick at the far slope's crown.

A breeze carried a sweet smell to me, and it felt good to breath it in. I made my way up toward the top of the slope I stood upon, and more of the surrounding land came into view. Beyond the woods across the stream, the land - mostly green meadows and little woods and small, rolling hills - was divided into huge, regular squares like a giant chessboard, and a medieval fortress stood at its southern end above which red flags were flying; at its northern end was another, but it was miles away, and I couldn't tell what standard it bore. To the south, a mushroom forest all in psychedelic colors; west the stream widened, joined by tributaries on its way to a dismal mire. To the east beyond castles and chessboards the hills built steadily toward a snow-capped mountain range; northwest, a woodland, dark and deep. And what of promises to keep? I wasn't sure. Why had I thought that?

Alec was waiting beside horses and wagon on a cobblestone path beyond the grass and puppy-headed flowers, and despite the mirror-gate having been too small to fit the wagon, it didn't seem strange to me that it was here. Aisha was on the slope seated beside a patch of puppies; she scratched their ears, and they licked her fingers and wagged their green petals excitedly. And Lisa? Lisa stood on the path looking at her surroundings with an expression I'd never seen before; not a smug smile, not a vulpine smile, not a smirk, but an honest smile, and happy.

It looked weird on her.

I joined the others on the cobblestone path, and I passed through a large patch of flowers on my way, these ones not puppy-headed, but vivid and blue and purple, pink, red and yellow and orange, and octarine, and shultrusent, and perfumed the air with a smell that tasted joyful and a little bit truculent; this was the source of the sweet smell.

Aisha came over to us, and between one step and the next, her smile vanished, and Lisa's followed.

"is something wrong?" I asked.

Aisha turned her head from left to right as if searching for something. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. "My power's gone," she said. "So's the exit."

Exit? Had there been an exit? I could vaguely recall such a thing, but it didn't seem like something to get upset over. I giggled. "You know what they say," I said. "Easy come, easy go."

Lisa raised an eyebrow. "Are you high, Taylor?" she asked.

What a strange thing to say. "Do I look like a cloud to you?" I asked.

Lisa's eyes went to the flowers I'd walked through, and she put two and two together.

"She's high," Alec confirmed. "Shit."

"I'm serious," Aisha said, and the words tasted frightened, which was weird because usually words taste like vibrations in the air. "My power isn't there anymore.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder, and they guided me over to the wagon, and I saw when I climbed in and lay down that it had been Lisa's hand and not just a free-floating one. A light rainbow colored mist began to curl about my body, and I watched in rapt fascination as it began to spread.

"Shit," Alec swore again. "Distract her. If that spreads across her whole body, she'll disappear and we'll never find her again."

The sky began to melt like it was made of wax, and all its colors ran together. Someone screamed, or maybe squeaked. A voice buzzed in my ear, which was a strange place for a voice. Weren't they supposed to stay in people's mouths? Or was it throats? I tried to pay attention. The others were really worried about something, but I got distracted by how interesting the sky was. So many different shades of blue all swirling together to make the one up there, and there were little puffs and wisps of white clouds that looked like cotton candy, and occasionally a bird would pass overhead, and I'd get lost in the shimmering of its feathers and the beat of its wings.

"...stopped Trumping out, at least," someone said. I wasn't sure who.

The wagon began to move beneath me, and luckily it knew to take me with it. The others kept talking, but I had lost myself in stimulus, and I watched the clouds drift by as the wagon wheels turned and turned and turned.

* * *

I don't how much time passed before I came back to myself, but eventually my thoughts grew clear again, or at least clearer than they had been. I sat up and said, "Oh. So this wasn't just a weird dream."

"Not so much," Aisha said sullenly from her seat beside me. "Do you always hallucinate out loud, or is that a Wonderland exclusive?"

I blinked. "What?"

"We spent the last half hour watching flocks of LSD-birds pirouetting through a sky like Starry Night, except it was day time," Aisha informed me.

I had no idea how to respond to that. "Um. I don't think I've ever hallucinated before, so…"

"Right," Aisha said. "So maybe it's just this place and not you. But just in case it's you and not Wonderland? Don't do drugs."

"She's right," Alec called from the front of the wagon. "You got lucky and had a trip that was quick and harmless. But people with reality warping powers like us?"

Oh. I went pale as the implications sank in through the haze that still muddled my thoughts, and I realized just how bad things could have gone just because I'd landed downwind of a patch of hallucinogenic flowers and smelled the air a little. "Okay," I said. "Drugs are bad.*

The wagon kept moving, and Aisha's mood didn't improve. I tried to think of why she was upset, because it seemed like a grumpiness that went beyond just having to see some weird images, and I could remember something about a power outage. Power… failure. My thoughts continued to clear by degrees, and after a time I was able to figure it out. Oh. "Power still gone?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"I thought powers were part of you," I said. "I didn't know they could be taken away."

"Me too," Aisha said. "There's always some bullshit trump like Hatchet Face, but…"

It suddenly occurred to me that the girl I was sitting next to had fought the Nine. She and her friends had driven off Jack Slash. I wanted to ask about it, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing you could just bring up in casual conversation. For that matter, I barely knew Aisha. She was a tagalong, the alternate universe sister of a handsome boy I also barely knew, and she hadn't just lived through the Nine she'd lived through Leviathan, too. It felt as though a yawning chasm had opened between us with no bridge from there to here. "Maybe wherever powers come from has a range?" I asked, mostly as a way to avoid asking why she'd left her home behind to follow us back to our Earth Bet.

"Lisa still has hers," she said.

I looked to Lisa, who was riding up front with Alec and rubbing at her temples as if they hurt her. "You sure?"

Aisha nodded. "I don't know why mine doesn't work here," she said, "but the sooner we get out of here the better."

"How long was I loopy for?"

She shrugged. "Like I said, half an hour."

I remembered her saying so before, and I felt stupid for having asked.

The wagon rolled on, heading north. After a time the path split, and we turned east. We crossed a stonework bridge over the little gully with the noisy stream and passed into the chessboard lands.

"Where's this Dreaming Pool?" I asked

"The Red Queen's palace," Alec said. "We'll have to ask leave to use it. Try not to let her get to you."

"Will she give us permission?" I asked.

"Maybe," Alec said.

"You've been here before, though," I said. "You know these people, right?"

Alec smirked. "I know them," he said, and absently twirled his scepter.

"And they know you," Lisa surmised, "and that's why the Red Queen isn't going to just let us pass through, isn't it." It wasn't a question. "What did you…" she stopped mid-sentence. "They hate you. You did something that drew the hate of every single being in Wonderland."

"Like I said," Alec repeated, "don't let the Red Queen get to you. She's annoying even when she doesn't hate you."

We passed through a few of the huge chess squares without incident, watching the countryside of Wonderland go by. Another twenty minutes and we stopped to relieve ourselves one at a time behind some thick bushes, and when we had all walked back to the wagon, the horses, and the road, we were no longer alone.

Two figures were watching us. They were standing under a tree, each with an arm around the other, and though we both recognized them, the names were out Lisa's mouth before I could even finish opening mine: "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," she said.

They were identical twins, both fat, both in identical clothes except that one had 'DUM' embroidered on his collar and the other, 'DEE'. As I regarded them, it occurred to me that no description I had ever read of them had ever indicated that their teeth were quite so sharp.

"She knows our names," said Tweedledum. "Are we famous? I always wanted to be famous."

"Contrariwise," said Tweedledee, "Maybe she guessed it. If she guessed it, we needn't be. If she guessed it, maybe we ain't. What's your name, good guesser? Who are your friends? But I ain't asking you to introduce the Regent: he's nobody's friend."

"And Nobody's his," said Tweedledum. "Strange fellow, Nobody. Got a fondness for tyrants, he does."

Alec gave the pair a bored look. "These two aren't worth our time," he said.

"Come now, come now," said Tweedledee. "No cause for rudeness, your majesty." He mock-bowed with an insulting little flourish. "I see you've brought two figments along. Two figments and a real girl."

"Contrariwise," Tweedledum began, and Aisha immediately interrupted him.

"The name's Aisha. These are Lisa and Taylor." She indicated each of us in turn. "Watch who you're calling figments."

"Ain't we doing just that?" Tweedledum asked.

"We are," Tweedledee said. "That's what we're using our eyes for. You're not a very smart figment, are you?"

Aisha's grin faltered, and I wondered what she might have done if her power had been working. "I see what you mean," she told Regent. "They always like this?" she asked.

"Always like ourselves?" asked Tweedledee. "Can't hardly expect someone to be unlike himself."

"Contrariwise," said Tweedledum, "Can't hardly expect someone to be like himself every day. Some days you can't help being someone else."

"Afraid so," Alec said.

I shook my head, torn between a sort of star-struck amusement and annoyance on behalf of my companions. But we weren't lost; Alec knew the way, and there seemed little point in staying to talk to the pair. "Goodbye, Tweedledee and Tweedledum," I said, and the horses began to move.

"I'm getting a little tired of people telling me I'm not real," Aisha muttered. It wasn't pitched to carry, but the pair seemed to hear it anyway.

"Not our fault that you're a figment of the Dreaming King's imagination," said Tweedledum.

"We've offended them," said Tweedledee. "Wait," he called. "Stay. You haven't said 'how do you do' and shake hands! Do you like poetry? We know some poems we could recite for you."

"Now it's just getting sad," Lisa said as we continued to ignore them.

"What shall we recite?" said Tweedledee, as though we had stopped to listen and not continued on our way. "The Walrus and the Carpenter?"

"Too long," said Tweedledum. He and his brother began to raise their voices so we would hear them as the distance between us increased. "Something shorter. Jabberwocky, perhaps?"

"You'll call the beast with that!" said Tweedledee. "No. Something shorter. The Serpent and the Unicorn!"

"Yes, yes!" cried Tweedledum.

Then they both began to recite the words:

" _The Serpent and the Unicorn were playing for the crown:_

 _The Serpent fought the Unicorn all round the town._

 _Some men called them tyrants, but none could pull them down;_

 _The game was rigged, and yet it was the only game around..._ "

My brow furrowed at that. Wasn't it supposed to be the Lion and the Unicorn? Whatever. I didn't care. Their words dwindled with distance to an unintelligible murmur, and then to silence.

* * *

We arrived at the palace that flew the red flags and banners thirty minutes later, and the guards at the gate recognized Alec at least. They led us within, and they brought us into the grand hall where the Red Queen was holding court. Two thrones stood side by side, and in his throne the Red King had a tall night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was slumped over, fast asleep.

A murmur went through the court at the sight of us. We approached the thrones, and the queen stood. She was tall, severe, and beautiful. Her skin was the color of mahogany wood, but not all a uniform shade; like wood it had a grain and variation. Some places darkened to a true brown, some lightened to a more reddish tone. Her hair was the same, and the overall impression was of a beautiful woman carved from wood and brought to life, though her form, her face, and her royal robes had as much give and flex as any other person's might. Upon her head was a golden crown set with three blazing rubies, and she held a scepter in her hands.

"So," she said, and her voice was a richly textured thing, "the Regent returns to Wonderland. And no army of heartless nightmares and darker reflections at his back this time. When I remembered this yesterday, I was angry enough to have you killed, but I'm a different me today. Why have you come here, my lord Regent? And why shouldn't I feed you to a bandersnatch?"

Alec said nothing.

"What do you have to say for yourself, murderous child? What answer do you give for your reign of terror?"

"Nothing," Alec said with great contempt.

"Nothing?" the Red Queen asked. "You come before my court to say nothing? I doubt that very much, child of Amber."

"We came to ask if we could use the Dreaming-" I hastened to explain.

"Speak when spoken to!" the Red Queen sharply interrupted.

My eyes narrowed. For all her royal bearing and beauty, the Red Queen suddenly reminded me of nothing so much as my second grade teacher, a stern disciplinarian named Mrs. Smith who had hated above all else a child who spoke out of turn. "Dreaming Pool," I finished.

The Queen's eyes flashed with anger, but she looked to Alec. "Is this true?"

"Yes," he said.

"No answer for your crimes, nothing to say for yourself, but you come to ask a favor of us?"

"That's right," Alec said.

Aisha was glaring at the queen but hadn't spoken up just yet, and Lisa had a worrying smile. "If you say yes, we'll be out of your hair," Lisa said.

The queen fumed and gnashed her teeth at yet another person who spoke out of turn. "You aren't in my hair. None of you! And never shall be. I don't normally like to take the example of the wicked Queen of Hearts, but-" she stopped and thought. "Yes, yes," she said. She pointed to Lisa. "Your next proposal, girl, speak it so I can answer. But think before you speak it."

"There must be something you want more than to kill Regent," Lisa said.

"And there is," mused the queen. "Yes, there is one thing."

Why wasn't Alec talking? Was he really going to let us do the talking when he was the one with the history here? Then again, considering how much these people seemed to hate him, maybe that was for the best. "Tell us," I said.

"Within the treasure vault of the Monarchy of Hearts there is an item, a bauble, a treasure which the queen of that land stole from me while I was giving her a proper examination of her claim to royalty."

"What did she steal?" I asked.

"I told you," the queen snapped. "An item, a bauble, a treasure. A thing which I valued. Pay attention or you'll never be worth anything, foolish child. Of what use is a child who doesn't pay attention?"

My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I meant, what was the specific item that was stolen?"

"The Hellflame," said the queen. "An artifact of power brought here from a distant world some years ago, and stolen by the Queen of Hearts. A fist sized ruby set in silver fire. Bring it to me, and all is forgotten. Bring me this, and you may use the Dreaming Pool provided you use it to leave."

"It's a deal," I said.

Later, when we had safely exited the palace and were beyond the earshot of the guards, I turned toward Alec and asked, "What was that?"

"Nothing," he said.

My anger finally hit its flashpoint. "Not nothing," I snapped. "I've been very patient with you. You said we couldn't just go to Amber because you'd be arrested, that your family wasn't welcome there, and you refused to explain any further. You said we were all in danger when you found out I'd met Pyewacket, enough danger that you broke us out of Coil's base, but when we asked, you said there wasn't time to explain. Then we had several fucking days of travel to tell us all about it, and you never explained it then, either. Now you lead us into the court of a queen who hates you and might have killed all of us just for being with you, you leave us to flounder out an agreement on our own, and you tell me it's fucking nothing? Like hell. Either explain what's going on, or-"

"Or what?" he asked.

"Or I'll assume you've been lying about everything, that even you seeming to help me is really just you using me, and that there really isn't a worthwhile person behind the asshole."

He looked at me in disbelief. "Your mother really didn't teach you anything, did she."

"Fuck you, Alec."

He shook his head. "No. I mean she really didn't. Why would you ever assume that a family member's help wasn't also them using you somehow? Why would you ever assume that family would tell you the whole truth?"

That wasn't what I'd expected to hear. "Excuse me?"

"Never. Trust. Family."

"What?"

"We're family. We are related. I don't know how exactly, but you're either a cousin, an aunt, or a niece. And you're trusting me to be on the level? Are you insane?"

I had no idea what to say to that. "Why wouldn't I trust my family?"

"Because they're your family. Never, ever trust family, Taylor. It's far more dangerous than trusting a stranger: with a stranger, there's a chance you may be safe."

What the hell kind of family life had Alec had to give him an attitude like that? My anger was mixed with pity, now, and he snorted when he saw it in my eyes. "Are you going to explain?" I asked.

"Fine," he said.

We mounted up on the front of the wagon with Lisa and Aisha sitting in the back. Lisa was at least making some effort not to look like she was listening to our conversation; Aisha made no such effort. The horses set off down the trail, the wagon began to move, and Alec started talking.

"I'm not going to tell you everything," he said.

"I didn't think you would."

"In fact, you should assume that I'm only going to tell you what's in my best interest to tell you."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Now, what do you want to know?"

Quite a bit, but I had to prioritize the most immediate problems first. "What did you do to make the people of Wonderland hate you?"

"I conquered them. I called up an army out of Shadow, some from places closer to Chaos, some from darker reflections of Wonderland, and I tore the place up. Then I changed them to make them less like themselves and more like what I wanted. Worse in the Monarchy of Hearts than here." There was no expression on his face, and his voice was as casual as if he were talking about the weather.

"Why?"

"I was eleven, right? I knew my sister loved Alice. She had a copy in Thari that was actually signed by the author. I was really angry with her, so I decided I'd go find a Wonderland and wreck it. That's all."

That was more than a little horrifying. "You raised an army and conquered Wonderland," I said. "At the age of eleven. Because you wanted to get back at your sister."

Alec shrugged. "It made perfect sense to me at the time."

"What did she do that made you so angry?"

"Almost blew my chance to run away from home," he answered.

"Why did you want to run away?"

He didn't answer, and by his dark expression, I guessed he wasn't going to.

I considered my next question, and along with it the additional question of whether or not I should have anything further to do with Alec. I tried to imagine myself in his place, doing what he had done and for the reasons he'd done it, and I couldn't.

"What is Pyewacket?" I asked.

"A demon."

"What do you mean by that?"

Regent shrugged. "Demon. Usually a spirit, often given to predatory or antisocial behavior, exists on the cosmic totem pole somewhere between god and mortal. People call us demons, sometimes, and they're not totally wrong. Far as I know, he's the larval form of a greater independent demonic species. You can call them Horrors."

"Horrors," I echoed.

"They're bad news. The adult versions are responsible for a semi-regular apocalyptic harvest of nearby Shadows. They gain power by forming connections to beings that catch their interest. As the connection deepens, so does their ability to influence the being they're linked to."

"Can they make a connection to anyone?" I asked. "How do they make them?"

"It depends," Alec said. "Usually it involves some sort of transaction. The speed they develop with varies, but once the connection is made, it's very hard to break."

"And you think he made a connection to me. That's the mark you were talking about, the one you said could be used to track me through Shadow."

"Yes."

"Could it have been placed by something else?"

He nodded. "Sure. There are a couple other ways it could have happened. None of them are very likely."

I considered what I had been told, and then I summed up the situation with two words: "Well. Shit." Another question occurred to me, then. "Okay," I said. "Last question. Why do you care? Why are you bothering to take me to Tir na Nog'th instead of just leaving? Where's the advantage for you?"

"You can work that out for yourself," he said. "Maybe Tattletale can give you a hint."

Little was said after that, and the wagon rolled on, and the horses walked, and Wonderland passed by around us. We crossed the bridge above the noisy stream and took the road's other fork toward the northern woodland, and our surroundings began to change. The light grew dimmer, the colors less saturated, the shadows darker still. Soon, the trees grew close around us, and only a little light seemed to filter through the dense, web-strewn canopy that crowded in above the road.

The air became close and warm, and no breeze came to ease it. The woods had gone eerily silent, no birdsongs, no breeze, only the clop clop clop of horse hooves on the path and the sound of rolling wheels. On the side of the road a sign showed the home of the Mad Hatter down one side trail and the home of the March Hare down the other.

Then came a high pitched animal bleat; a shriek, a scream of pain. It broke the stillness like a brick through glass, and flinches followed like shards.

The sound came nearer along with the rushing, crackling, stomping of a body fleeing through thick underbrush. It leaped out onto the path, a brown-furred humanoid rabbit-thing in the tattered remains of a tan and green suit. It was wounded; one arm hung limply, the top half of its left ear was missing, and whatever color the vest and shirt beneath its jacket, they were sanguine now. The thing seemed to recognize Regent, and it froze in horror.

In the branches above the path, something stirred.

I looked up in time to see a wide, wide grin with far too many pointed teeth.

A spectacular leap carried a lithe feline shape down onto what must have been the March Hare, and the hare screamed.

A large paw, claws extended, slammed down onto the March Hare's back, knocking him flat on his face, and he let out a sharp, mewling bleat before the air was driven from his lungs.

"My lord Regent," said the Cheshire Cat. Cat? He was more of a size with a Cheshire mountain lion, and the other half of the March Hare's ear dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Have you come to join my hunt? Slice his throat for me, and I'll set aside the liver for you and your consorts."

Consorts? It thought we were Alec's consorts? I almost opened my mouth to deny it, but then it occurred to me that if this creature was deferential toward Alec, letting it know that I wasn't under his protection might not be the best idea.

"That isn't why I'm here, Cat," Alec said.

"Oh?" asked the cat.

"Please," gasped the March Hare, his voice barely a hissing whisper as he struggled to regain his breath, "please don't let him eat me."

"We're only here on an errand," Alec said. "Don't let me interrupt you."

"Are we really going to…" Aisha began.

"Please don't let him eat me," the March Hare begged. "I don't want to die."

The Cheshire Cat's grin never slipped. "What's the life of a March Hare worth in any case?" he asked. "Surely it's not worth the trouble of making me your enemy. And it isn't like his life really matters. When I kill him and devour him, another March Hare will wake up in his home good as new, with no memory of this unpleasant affair."

"Perhaps some other March Hare will wake up in his home, good as new, but he won't be me," said the hare. "He won't share my memories, and my unique existence will be ended forever." He shook his head in denial. "It matters a great deal to me."

The cat's grin widened. "That's because you hold the world responsible for your own failings," he said. "You are born and you drift on the surface of events. Sometimes you feel as though you influence them, and that gives rise to striving and to desire. This is a mistake. It only leads to more striving, more desire, and inevitably, to more suffering when you are confronted with just how little you matter in the cosmic perspective."

"You're no better," hissed the March Hare.

"Maybe not, but you might find peace if you let go of desire. Surely it won't do you any good in any case, and if you are going to be eaten, you might as well find enlightenment before you're gobbled up."

"Cheap words from predator with his teeth to my throat," the March Hare replied. "I might be inclined to believe your argument if it weren't made in the service of your own appetite."

The cat nodded. "A legitimate point," he said, "and one I will think on while I digest you."

"That's enough," I said, and dismounted from the wagon.

The cat fixed his gaze on me. "Is it now?" he asked.

"Taylor," Alec said, "we don't need this."

A second feline shape moved in the branches above us, a second, smaller form with a more mischievous grin than predatory.

"What kind of hero would I be if I let him kill someone right in front of me without trying to stop it?" I asked.

"A living one," Alec answered.

"So eager to die for a good cause," purred the cat. "It won't help. Even if you drive me away, I'll only return for this fellow when you aren't here to save him and have my meal then."

In answer, I pulled out my can of pepper spray, pointed it at the cat's face, and let fly.

The Cheshire… Mountain Lion screamed. He howled and yowled and clenched his eyes shut and clawed at them and drew blood. Then he sprinted away into the woods making so much noise that I could hear the path of his retreat for a mile.

I capped the pepper spray and returned it to my pocket.

"Thank you," the March Hare said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for my life."

"I might not be here to save you next time," I told him.

"I understand. I'll go away. I'll move to the chessboard lands, where Regent's power hasn't corrupted Wonderland so badly. Thank you." He kissed my hands, and then, tears in his eyes, he ran away down the path we had come by.

I smiled, and turned to the others. Aisha and Lisa smiled back; Aisha resheathed the wicked combat knife that I hadn't noticed her pulling out. Alec just shrugged. "He won't forget what you did," he said, "if you ever come this way again."

"Neither will the March Hare," I said, and feeling more human than I had in days, I climbed back onto the wagon.

"What a boor," said a smug voice from above. "It was good to see him run. Better to see him eat his own words."

A second grinning Cheshire Cat hopped down from the tree branches, this one the size of a normal cat. He vanished in mid-jump and then reappeared on our wagon. "Well done," he said.

"Are you the real Cheshire Cat?" Aisha asked.

"I am, and I am not," the smaller cat said. "We are both real. But I was first, and I, at least, have a sense of humor about things. I, at least, understand that even if from cradle to tomb isn't that long a stay," his grin grew wider, "life is a cabaret."

Lisa laughed. "You like Liza Minelli?" she asked.

"I adore Liza Minelli," said the cat. "And as it happens, I know a bar near here where we can discuss the matter further, and relax, have a drink, and watch a Victorian gentleman paint. You're all invited, of course, so long as the Regent behaves."

"I'm down," Aisha said.

"We don't have time for bar-hopping," Alec said.

"And I'm pretty sure we're all too young," I added.

Aisha gave us both a dirty look.

"Suit yourselves. I always like to offer an inviting paw to people who strike my interest. Maybe when you're older?"

"Maybe then," I said with a smile.

He began to vanish, then, everything fading but his grin, which lingered a moment in the air before it, too, was gone.

On. Distance shrank, and Alec guided us through with the deftest of touches on the world around us. I could feel him doing something, but I couldn't quite tell what. Then the path widened and the forest pulled back, and we came to the Palace of Hearts.

It was a huge, sprawling thing, spread over many acres of land. Topiary along the side of the road depicted mythological beasts of every sort. There was a sphynx and a hydra and a naga and a gryphon and a pegasus, and many more. The last two, standing just short of the gates, were a serpent with a single red rose serving as its eye and an empty hollow where the other should be across from a unicorn studded with white roses, rampant, and facing to the dexter.

The palace was a place of golden splendor, the gardens stunningly beautiful, the grounds immaculate, and above the gates, mounted on pikes, were thirty severed heads. Some were old and rotted, little better than skulls; some still dripped fresh blood; most were in between.

Alec turned us around, and where there had been forest now stood what looked like a small town of maybe a few thousand people. It was walled, but the gates facing the palace were open, and we went unchallenged as we rode through. We stopped at an inn, took the horses to the stables, ate and drank and refreshed ourselves, and then set out to rob the vault of the Queen of Hearts.

* * *

Night fell, and we crept in under cover of darkness, though the darkness covered far less than it should have; the sun set and the sky turned dark blue and then black and speckled with stars, but the land remained twilit. Through midnight gardens we crept, pausing and ducking back now and again to avoid patrolling guards, past roses and cherry trees and animate card-men bearing spears and swords.

When we reached the palace building, Alec whispered, "Stay close. Close as you can." Then he spoke the guide words of another spell, and the light grew dim around us.

"We're invisible," he said, "but only while you're close to me. Get more than an arm-length away and you'll start to reappear."

"Do you know where we're going?" Lisa asked.

He nodded. "Yes. Now no more talking until we arrive."

Lisa looked annoyed, but she shut her mouth. She hadn't actually said that much since we'd left Earth Bet, and I found myself wondering what her power was telling her about her surroundings.

We followed Alec, always staying closer than was comfortable, four bodies pressed in close and walking as a group, and it made me feel a little claustrophobic. Three times, a guard nearly discovered us. Three times, I held my breath and tried to think inconspicuous thoughts as the animate card-man stalked on. Then we came to a long, gilded hallway leading to the vault door, and my heart nearly stopped beating.

The Queen of Hearts threw open a door nearby and stalked out into the hall with a satisfied smile. Her hands were covered in blood, the room she had come from was drenched in it, and she was obnoxiously sexy. She was tall, and had long, luxurious red hair, a pin-up's bombshell body, and she was dressed in a black and red corset over a black and red skirt, and a golden crown rested on her brow. She had red heels, red gloves that went past her elbows, and the whole ensemble was almost preposterously skimpy, showing off her curves in ways that made me both jealous and a little offended. Like, she was less the Queen of Hearts and more "Sexy Queen of Hearts."

She licked some of the blood from her fingers as she stalked away down the hall, and she did it with one of those painful looking hip-rolling walks that girls always did in video games, and that I'd never even tried to pull off for fear of dislocating my hips.

Once she was out of earshot, Lisa, Aisha, and I all looked Alec's way.

"Really?" Lisa asked.

"That wasn't me," Alec whispered, shaking his head.

"Uhuh," Lisa said.

"It wasn't," he insisted. "These beings have lives and make choices of their own."

Nobody believed him. About the first part, not the second.

"I kind of want my own copy of that outfit," Aisha said.

I gave her an offended look, and Alec indicated Aisha as if to say, 'see?'

"What?" she asked with a grin. "I'd look damn sexy in that."

I tried not to sigh.

We approached the door to the treasury. It was locked, but Lisa produced a set of tools and set to examining it while the rest of us stood awkwardly pressed too close for comfort in order to continue sharing the invisibility spell. She had it open in short order, and her ensuing grin was more than a little smug.

"How did you do that?" I asked.

"I'm psychic," she said.

That didn't really answer my question. At all. What, had she read the lock's mind somehow? I bit back the almost instinctual retort I'd learned in parahuman history, that telepathy was impossible with a human-sized brain, that only the Simurgh was psychic. … then again, this was Wonderland. If Lisa really was psychic, maybe she had read the lock's mind. Maybe the locks here were all sentient.

I regarded the lock suspiciously, and then followed the others through the now open door. We shut it behind us but didn't relock it, and then descended a long stairway into the treasury of the Monarchy of Hearts.

It had high ceilings like a cathedral, and sound carried impossibly well. Alec let the invisibility spell fade and we all finally stepped away from each other as we came into the main chamber. An open door at the end of the room showed a gilded hallway leading off probably to more chambers like this one.

Fabulous treasures of every description were all about us. There were artfully arranged piles of gold, a literal fountain of jewels with a diamond basin, the fountain itself made of emerald, and countless sapphires pouring out of it, raining down into and filling the basin before being drawn up again into the fountain. There were paintings and sculptures and strange displays of every description. One display consisted of twenty blue shoes nailed to a board. Another was a living, beating, disembodied heart suspended in white crystal, pumping bright red blood into a large stone basin; the basin should have filled up long ago, or perhaps a minute from now, but the basin was never full. And there, the object of the Red Queen's desire: a slim urn made of time-barred silvery fire that held a fist-sized ruby in the uppermost tips of its blazing fingers. The silver fire held the ruby in an unbreakable grip, and the gemstone glimmered coolly just the same.

"Hellflame," I murmured. It was radiating heat and cold both; heat from the time-barred flame, cold from the ruby.

"Damn," Aisha said. "I wonder what that would sell for back home."

"Millions at least," Lisa said.

Alec began examining the stand on which the urn rested, checking for traps before he removed it. As he looked, I heard a peculiar noise that I couldn't place. It was soft and strangely tremulous, and whatever it was, its source was coming closer.

"Do you hear that?" I asked.

"Hear what?" Aisha asked, and then paused when she noticed it, too. "...huh."

Alec spoke several words in a language I did not understand, and there was a sense of pressure in the air. He began to reach for the Hellflame, his hands moving through air that quivered like gelatin.

Then Lisa heard it, too. She looked around, saw nothing approaching, and then asked, "Is that... whiffling?"

Another noise joined the first. A low, peculiar burbling beneath the tremulous whiffle.

The whiffling drew nearer, the burbling louder; a pungent animal smell was in the room now, and heavy, irregular footfalls were coming down the hall accompanied by the scraping of wicked claws across the floor.

Alec looked at us, the Hellflame now grasped in his gloved hands. "Okay," he said, "which one of you was thinking uffish thoughts?"

"Not me," Lisa said.

"Nothing uffish about my thoughts," Aisha said.

They all looked my way as I stood in uffish thought, and my cheeks flushed. "Shit," I said, and the vulgarity sounded strange and out of place, and I wasn't entirely sure that what I said was what I'd said.

The scraping, nearer. The whiffling and the burbling, nearer. The animal smell, all but unbearable; a shadow fell through the door.

"Oh, frabjous day," Lisa swore.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?" But I knew as well as she.

"The jaws that bite, the claws that catch..."

It crawled into the chamber, and its burbling grew louder when it saw us. Twin eyes of flame fixed upon us, and it made a soft chuffing noise that I took for a snarl.

Aisha stared at the creature in horrified fascination. "Bitch has a jabberwock guarding her vault."

"And me without my vorpal sword," I said.


	11. 2,3 - Pattern

" _Life's incessant ceremonies leap everlasting, humans spring eternal on hope's breast and frying pans without fires are often far between."_

 **To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

2.3 - Pattern

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

The jabberwock came on, and things got very hectic, very quickly. It moved with a strangely sinuous grace at once appropriate to and at odds with its peculiar body. The beast had two arms and two legs, wings that could never have supported its body in flight, a lizard-like tail and a long neck that gave it an appearance that was somewhere between an eastern and a western dragon, though in truth it was neither. A pair of antennae stood up from its head above a pair of whiskers that dangled down on either side of the jaws. Coarse, bristly hairs hung down in a line that traced the bottom of its jaws, and its gait and movement had both bird and ape-like qualities.

It slashed at me with its left claw, and the limb it was attached to had more reach than I'd anticipated and it was faster than I'd expected. I dodged back, but the claws scored on my belly. It tore through my shirt, but Skitter's costume held, and instead of being disemboweled, I was only knocked over.

I rolled with the impact. I knew how to take a fall, how to land safely. I'd drilled the movements so many times it was almost second nature, and I came back to my feet with the haste of one who wishes to avoid being eaten. The others scattered as the jabberwock slashed twice more, and Aisha hissed in pain when a claw opened a long, shallow cut along her forearm.

The jabberwock kept moving, driving us back as it interposed its body between us and the exit.

Shit. We needed more than just to scramble to avoid this vaguely dragonish bird-lizard-ape monster; we needed a plan. I needed a strategy. My thoughts raced even as I ducked beneath the jabberwock's whipping tail, then sprang over the blood-filled stone basin to increase the distance between us.

What did I have? I'd left most of my supplies back at the town where we'd left our wagon. I had with me a half-eaten protein bar. Jewel fountain. Can of pepper spray. One Thinker ally. One depowered ally. One possibly sociopathic ally with demonstratedly flexible, combat-effective powers.

I pulled the pepper spray from my pocket, uncapped it, and aimed for the burning eyes. The spray hit the jabberwock exactly where I'd aimed, and it recoiled; it clenched its long-fingered hands into fists and scrubbed at its eyes, burbling noisily, its teeth clacking loudly together again and again and again.

I dropped the now empty can.

When I tried to make for the exit, the creature seemed to sense my approach; its tail snapped out to intercept me, and I backed away. "Ideas?" I asked.

"I have a few," Lisa said, and drew her gun from the holster at her hip; it was fixed with a suppressor, which minimized the chances of gunshots alerting the guards.

"Alec?" I asked. The jabberwock blinked its overlarge eyes again and again, thrashing wildly with its tail, the great bulk of the creature swinging left and right.

He shook his head. "I'm down to my last two spells before I have to dip into resources I'd rather not use, and one of them really isn't..."

I ignored the questions that were immediately raised by his referring to those powers he'd displayed as 'spells', filing it in the same category as Myrddin and other capes who claimed their powers were magic. "You have to prepare it ahead of time?"

He nodded.

The jabberwock cocked its head. It still couldn't see us, but it could hear us just fine. It advanced two of its massive steps and slashed with its claws at the spot my voice had come from.

We backed off even further, and it blinked again, and then it opened one eye, flinched, opened it again, and then forced open the other terrible eye.

It came rushing at us like a runaway train, and it was all we could do to get out of the way. I took another glancing blow as I evaded, and this time the claws actually tore the sleeve of Skitter's costume, leaving a thin red line across the flesh below. I kept moving; the jabberwock followed. I put the gem fountain between us, and it burst through, scattering jewels in every direction.

Lisa took careful aim with her gun, holding it with both hands. She breathed in; she exhaled; she squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

She squeezed the trigger again, and again nothing. No bullet fired, no crack of gunfire, nothing. She checked the safety; it was off. She checked the magazine, found it full, snapped it back into place. "Well," she said. "Sh-" she cut off, pivoted, and sprinted away to avoid a decapitating strike from the jabberwock, which had closed while she was trying to shoot, and we all moved with her, trying to keep distance between us and the creature.

"I was afraid of that," Alec said. "Gunpowder won't burn here."

I was pretty sure the only reason none of us had died yet was because the monster kept switching its focus; if it would just chase one of us down, we'd be out of luck, but the monster either hadn't thought of that yet or was too stupid to.

"The door," I said, pointing to the open door the jabberwock had come into the chamber through. We turned and ran for it, and the monster came close at our heels. Alec and I outpaced Lisa and Aisha almost instantly, and I slowed; Alec didn't. He made it through the massive door and began to swing it shut, but it was huge, and steel, and he strained against it for several seconds before it started moving.

Aisha made it through with plenty of space to spare. Lisa had a less comfortable squeeze. I didn't quite make it.

Something snagged my foot in mid stride. I didn't look to see what it was, but frantically hopped forward in my free leg, jerking my captured foot as hard as I could. I seemed to hang there for an eternity, just short of the door, staring into Lisa's horrified gaze as the huge, jabberwock-sized steel door swung inexorably closer and closer to shut. There was pain as claws pierced my boot. … and then I wrenched my foot free. There was lightning-stroke of pain, and then I tumbled through the door just before it slammed shut and the latch clicked.

I was bleeding, but I couldn't tell how badly. My foot hurt, and I could feel my sock grow wet with blood, but it supported my weight, and I managed to get out of the way as the others searched for a bar or a lock with no luck; the door locked on the other side.

The door and the wall around it shuddered with a massive impact, and we all backed away.

We were in a long hallway, now, with many rooms filled with treasures on either side. Further down the hall, the weirdly ambient illumination of the treasure vault grew dim, and the far end was in darkness; from the smell, it was probably the jabberwock's lair.

"Alec," I said, "you said you had two spells left? Which two?"

"Neither of them are useful here," he said.

"Which two?"

"Induce Latency and Concerto for Saw Blades."

I took a moment to digest that, and the door shuddered violently. "What do they do? I asked.

"Induce Latency hits everyone but me for maybe a hundred feet and slows down their reaction speed by exactly half a second," Alec explained.

Okay. Not ideal but potentially useful. Also potentially very dangerous to me, Lisa, and Aisha.

The door frame shook again, and there was a noise of protesting metal. Aisha let out a curse and ducked into one of the nearby treasure rooms. She came back out with a wickedly sharp battle-axe set with two rubies that seemed to glow with an inner light.

"What does the other one do?" Lisa asked.

"It's a joke spell," Alex answered.

"Concerto for Saw Blades is a joke spell?" I asked.

"I never actually planned to use it," Alec said. "I marathoned the Saw movie series, right? Then I made a spell based on that. For fun."

Lisa and I exchanged looks. "What," I said.

"For fun?" Lisa asked.

Aisha didn't say anything, but she had this smirk on her face that would have made me worry if there hadn't been bigger concerns. Jabberwock-sized concerns. Beating on the door, trying to get in.

This was going to end in tears. Probably mine.

"Yeah," Alec confirmed. "It'll mulch a room pretty well, but it isn't actually useful in a sorcerous duel or anything, and I don't know that it will do much against a jabberwock."

I let out a long breath.

"Not like it matters," Aisha said. "We got the hellflame; we can just leave from here, right?"

That was a good point. "She's right," I said. "Unless the jabberwock figures out how to turn a door handle, we're home free."

Abruptly, the jabberwock went still on the other side of the door. There was a pause, and then, slowly, as though being done by a creature not entirely familiar with the movements involved, the door handle began to turn.

God. Damn it.

"You just had to say it," Alec said, echoing the recriminations of my internal monologue.

"Oh, come on!" Aisha moaned as the handle turned all the way and the door began to slowly swing back open.

We ran.

Alec took hold of Shadow as we went, and there came a light in the darkness ahead. The corridor widened into a ballroom-sized chamber exposed to the sky; the sky was empty, with no moon and no stars to lighten the dark. The jabberwock ran after us on all fours with a long, loping gait, and it was gaining.

There was a roar as a blazing meteor fell into the chamber from that empty sky. The sound of its impact was indescribable. There was a bloom of heat, and the ground lurched violently beneath us. The walls of the chamber were still shaking, and pillars snapped like matchsticks, spraying debris in a disturbingly liquid fashion. Aisha stumbled, but Alec caught her before she could hit the ground. She recovered quickly, and we ran on out of the chamber and onto a well kept path leading through a tangled forest. A cloud of dust swept along behind us; I could no longer see the jabberwock, and I had no idea if it had been hit by the meteor.

By the meteor. The meteor that Alec had called up. Holy shit. "Did you just throw a meteor at that jabberwock!?"

"Keep running!" he yelled back. "I don't think that killed it. It's being guided!"

We kept running. Lisa and Aisha were getting seriously winded, but we didn't stop, couldn't stop. The dust cloud swept over us and the world became ashen. Then the textures changed, and it was fog instead of dust, and after a minute it got so thick that none of us could see more than a few feet in front of us.

When the visibility got to pea soup level, Alec's grip on Shadow slipped away, and we stopped running for fear of broken ankles. We walked with hands joined to keep from losing each other in the fog, and everything was cold, damp, and silent.

Some time passed - I don't know how much - and I asked, "Are we still in Wonderland?"

"Yeah," Alec said. "And I'm pretty sure this fog is someone's enchantment."

"How uncommonly perceptive of you," a low, malevolent voice purred from just behind me.

I sound around and saw only fog. My heart began to race; I recognized that voice.

"We can't have you running away through Shadow when I've already taken such trouble to set up an ambush for you," said the Cheshire Puma. There was a glint of light off a fanged grin somewhere to the right.

It seemed that frying pans without fires were few and far between.

We stumbled into a clearing in the tulgey wood, and the fog billowed and flowed across our path like a serpent. Dozens of points of orange, flickering light approached us through the fog, and the Cheshire Puma's voice purred viciously, "And to think, I wouldn't have gone to half this trouble if your concubine hadn't subjected me to a weapon derived from pepper. This is checkmate, Regent."

The fog broke apart and billowed away, leaving the clearing suddenly clear and open, and we were surrounded. The Queen of Hearts stood leaning casually on an oversized battleaxe with a wide smile on her face, and at her side were over a hundred card-soldiers, some carrying torches. Behind us, another fifteen or sixteen closed in to prevent our escape. And behind them, through the forest I could hear the burbling call of the jabberwock.

"My Lord Regent," the queen said, and her voice was just as obnoxiously sexy as the rest of her; it curled like smoke, both commanding and inappropriately sexual in tone, and again I felt vaguely offended. "Though I'd prefer some time for a little foreplay, there's something to be said for just getting down to business when you're you're already in the mood. For your crimes against Wonderland, against my kingdom, and against my person, I hereby sentence you to death." She raised her axe and smiled viciously. "Off with his head!" She gestured to include me, and Lisa, and Aisha. "Off with all of their heads!"

The card-soldiers rushed at us, spears at the ready, we retreated before them. They herded us into a smaller and smaller circle in the center of the clearing. The Cheshire Puma stalked around behind the ranks, grinning madly, and the Queen of Hearts seemed barely able to restrain herself from joining her soldiers.

"Alec," Lisa said, "You knew we were coming here. You knew what the dangers were. Why didn't you have a full suite of combat spells ready to go before we even left?"

Alec shrugged, acting for all the world as if we weren't surrounded by a group of enemies that would kill us in another few moments. "Time and energy," he said.

Lisa pinched the bridge of her nose. "And you decided that Call of Duty was more important than prep work for a journey to Wonderland."

Alec looked at her like she just said the most obvious thing in the world, and he didn't bother to answer.

The first of the soldiers got close enough for spear work, and things got desperate. I pivoted to avoid a thrust from one, then had to grab a second spear by the pointy end, and I felt the material of Skitter's gloves ripping, but I shifted my grip before the speartip could do more than give me a minor puncture. I put another hand on the haft, then, and used the spear deflect three others, then I wrenched it out of the soldier's hands, spun it around to be facing the correct way, and brought it up into a defensive position.

Aisha used her axe to yank a spear out of position, and Lisa, wielding Alec's scepter, followed it up by pressing the tip to the card soldier's torso. There was a crackling discharge, and the card-man fell, smoke rising from his form.

The jabberwock was coming. One of its wings was a smoldering ruin, its left arm hung limply and it was bleeding from many cuts, but it was coming. The soldiers hadn't noticed it yet, but the Cheshire Puma did, and his hackles went up. "No," he said, and vanished.

"So," I said, "Concerto for Saw Blades." I twisted to avoid a thrust, didn't quite make it, and took it as a hammer blow against a section of chitinous armor, which cracked audibly beneath the force of the hit. A flare of pain went through my ribs on the left side of my torso, but I fought on. Aisha was bleeding from a puncture in her thigh, and Lisa had taken a spear to the shoulder, though she'd tasered the guard who'd stabbed her. Even Alec wasn't entirely unscathed, though he, too, was wielding a stolen spear against our enemies.

"Guess so," Alec conceded. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

The jabberwock hit the card-men's back lines like the proverbial ton of bricks. Screams went up, and what had been an organized battle which we were about to lose horribly went completely off the rails. For a few panicked seconds everything was a rush of chaotic movement and a crush of bodies. Then Alec and I both swung our spears about to clear away the card soldiers nearest us, making full use of our beyond human physical strength. Bodies tumbled; the jabberwock burbled and hissed and tore three soldiers limb from limb.

"Warn me?" I asked.

"You ask for a Bolshevik Muppet solution, don't be surprised when that's what you get."

"We are about to die, Alec," I snapped.

"Shit," he said. He looked to all of us. "Stay low and run the fuck away as soon as you get the chance."

"Cast it already!" Aisha hissed.

Alec spoke the guide words to his spell: "I want to play a game."

The Concerto for Saw Blades began.

Seven saw blades snapped into existence in a mandala formation around Alec. They began to spin. Spearmen clashed frantically with the jabberwock. The Queen of Hearts moved in with her oversized battleaxe, and we each shifted position, watching each other, her wary of the reach of my spear and me wary of what she might attempt out of sheer bloodlust.

Seven saw blades shot forward, buzzing loudly as they sliced through flesh. The Queen of Hearts got her axe in the way of the one that came for her, and it deflected noisily off the steel of her weapon, showering her with sparks in the process, and she laughed; card men were cut to pieces; a saw blade bit into the jabberwock's hide, and it hissed and burbled and clacked its teeth as it turned its burning gaze once more upon us.

For a moment, the battle stopped. For a moment, all was still as every combatant took in the brutality of what had just happened.

The saw blades made another pass, and the results were spectacular and unwatchable. Then the concerto's second movement began; the saw blade solo ended, and they were joined by a host of flying reverse bear traps, each connected to another with a length of rusted industrial chain, each accompanied by a key.

"Now," Alec said. "Run!"

We sprinted through the din as the flying reverse bear traps set upon the card soldiers, clamping down on heads to prime the traps; their keys, too, attached themselves to and burrowed into parts of anatomy their possessors would prefer not to lose. A reverse bear-trap came for me, and I smacked it off course with my stolen spear. One almost got Aisha, but she dropped prone at the last second, and she had to be helped to her feet.

The air was full of spinning saw blades and screams and lengths of chain, and we ran. The jabberwock let out a shrill, piercing whistle of protest, and we ran.

The Cheshire Puma leaped out of hiding, and it had me dead to rights, but a flying reverse bear trap knocked it off course, and a saw blade grazed its belly; it recoiled from the pain, and we ran.

The third movement began behind us with malignant industrial noises, and we fled into the night. I was numb with shock and horror; Lisa looked like she was going to be sick; Alec looked embarrassed; Aisha was giggling like a lunatic as she repeated, "Holy shit!" over and over again.

We were clear, then, and only the awful sounds of the ongoing spell and the dwindling screams and the laughter of the Queen of Hearts followed us then. Once even that could no longer be heard, I turned to Alec.

"What the fuck?" I asked.

"I warned you," he muttered, and he had, but my imagination had proven insufficient to the task of anticipating what would happen.

"We are going to start a list," Lisa said a little shakily. "A list of things Alec is not allowed to do. We are going to put 'create and cast spells inspired by the Saw franchise' at the top of that list. Any objections?"

Alec frowned. "I have an objection, yeah."

"Any objections from people who aren't Alec?" Lisa qualified.

There were no objections; the motion was carried.

After all that, and once we were far enough away from the battle site to be confident in our safety, we broke out the first aid kit and did our best to treat the injuries that had accrued. The puncture wounds were the worst, and there wasn't a lot that could be done for them without sutures, but we cleaned and bandaged them at least, and made sure that nobody was in danger of immediate death.

We returned to the town where we had left our wagon. It took less time than it should have with Alec shifting Shadow to give us shortcuts. Once we were back in our rooms at the inn, Alec broke out a much larger medical kit, cleaned the injuries again, and deftly stitched up everyone's puncture wounds in turn.

I remember an argument over whether we should move on or if it was safe to stay here for the night that Alec settled by shifting us into a different version of Wonderland. Afterward, we slept.

* * *

The next morning, my injuries felt better, my aches had grown less, and even the spear punctures had made some progress towards healing. Lisa and Aisha weren't so lucky, but they got out of bed and went about their business just the same. We traced our path back to the chesslands and the Red Queen's castle, short-cutting through Shadow all the while. There we met the beamish queen of the Red Chesslands, who took the Hellflame eagerly with trembling hands, her eyes feasting on the time-barred fire and icy ruby clenched within.

She led us away to a courtyard behind the palace where the Dreaming Pool awaited us. It was thirty feet from side to side, and circular, and only two feet deep. We waited for several hours before the waters turned silver. Then the queen pricked her finger with a dagger, spilling a single drop of blood into the pool; she spoke words of command by her right as a queen of Wonderland, and the way was opened to us.

"I do not wish you well," said the queen, "but I wish you gone. Perhaps that will serve the same purpose. Goodbye, Lord Regent."

Alec gave a mocking bow, stepped into the pool, and was gone.

A sense of weight settled over my shoulders and into my steps. I entered the pool, and the world went silver.

Tir na Nog'th. What can be said of that fog-spun, mist-woven, moonlight-brushed apparition? Silver and silence.

We were in a fountain in the grand square before what I now know as a reflection of the palace of Amber, and a deafening silence held. Ghosts moved through the busy streets, some of them strangers, some of then half-familiar, as in a recurring dream that you only vaguely recall having experienced before when you are within it, and for a time all I could do was stare in wonder. Here were the shadows of shadows, the possibles, the might have beens and the neverweres.

Lips moved. Ghosts spoke. No sound. No words for us.

"Come," Alec said, and his voice strained to overcome the silence.

We stepped out of the moonlit fountain, and no water clung to us. The full moon was huge in the sky, and its light almost unbearably intense. If I looked too long at the ground, it lost a measure of its opacity and I fancied I could see a dark, churning ocean miles below.

I shudder and follow Alec as past tense gives way to now.

Silence and silver… up the gleaming stair to the palace grounds… Ghost flowers and blossoms all in silver-scale, moonlit people in Luna's garden… a world in monochrome…

Hurrying through the entrance to the palace… the great hall and shadows of shadows… Aisha and Lisa and Alec and I seem unreal in the silver-cast world… the world is smoke and moonlight, but it feels more solid, more real than Brockton Bay ever did, and again I shudder.

There is an absence of moonlight, of starlight here, and the light is without direction… an absence, an emptiness, and we plunge through, guided by one who seems familiar with this place… down, down a half-absent stairway where nothingness made solid accounts for half the steps… a room of shifting and shaken shadows, star-tossed and moon-kissed, and there, leaning against the door that gives our exit, me.

She's younger. That painfully earnest innocence is still there in her eyes and in her bearing, and she seems to look up as we enter the room. Her lips move, and I recognize the words despite the lack of sound: "Hi Emma!"

The apparition of a younger Emma Barnes passes through me, and it feels like walking through a cloud. She runs to the younger me; they embrace and begin chatting excitedly, and there is an emptiness in my heart that I hadn't been conscious of.

Other ghost-children join the pair, and I recognize five of them as younger versions of Alec, Aisha, Lisa, Brian, and Bitch.

I turn away. We move through shifting shadows to open the door. Movement behind me. I look.

My younger self peers at us, eyes searching.

"Can she see us?" I asked.

"No," Alec said. "We can't directly interact with the ghosts here. They can't interact with us, either."

Silver eyes in a silver face... Hair in long, gossamer curls... And then her eyes meet mine, and both of us freeze. Her voice comes through the silence, distant and muted but audible nonetheless: "Who are you?" she asks.

I shoot Alec a questioning look, but he's just as baffled as I. "I'm Taylor," I tell the girl. "Who are you?"

Somewhere behind her is a school locker outlined with moonlight. It stands open, and there is nothingness within. The girl smiles. "Fate?" She pitches the word like a question.

"What do you mean by that?" I ask.

But her gaze slips past me. She looks around, not seeing me. Then Emma comes over and draws her back to the young Undersiders.

We press on.

The younger me isn't the only strange vision in that place. We descend a winding stair, and when we come to a landing, a boy is seated at a desk with his back to us, busily writing in a journal. Lisa freezes at the sight of him.

"Lisa?"

She shakes her head. "It's nothing." She doesn't look at the boy again, doesn't approach him.

We continue. Down, down the stairs until the walls fall away and we continue to descend into nothingness, occasionally passing motes of silver light suspended in the air.

Another landing, and this time it's a Laborn family dinner. Aisha and Brian are years younger, and current-Aisha grinds her teeth at the sight. She swings her Wonderland axe through the misty image, and it breaks apart into a diffuse cloud of unfocused illumination.

She doesn't want to talk about it. Not present nor past, even as tenses shifted with tensions and a lessening of the enchantment of now.

There were others. Other selves for each of us. Might have beens and impossibles, figments of a dream made real. The apparition of a happier me passed by in a painter's mask, a huge silver wolf at her side; a twenty something regal me with the sort of body I would have killed for was staring down into the abyss at the railing, batlike wings folded around her like a cloak, a chalice in her left hand; an armored me sat on a couch suspended over nothing with the Brockton Bay Wards gathered around her, all chatting animatedly. The armored me and the Wards each had a ring upon their ring-finger that shone like a star, and with the other me excepted, the rings seemed more real to my eyes than the bearers. Spectral Endbringers circled the stair and disappeared into the nothing, and one of them was Ziz with my face. More, and more, until we descended through a column of silver light through which too-familiar faces could sometimes be seen. Then the column faded, and we continued our descent down a silver stair suspended in nothingness, and time, too, was a dream.

The floor finally came into view, and we finally reached it, stepped off the stairway and into a wide natural cavern. Not far away from the base of the endless stairway, a silver woman in a trenchcoat stood beside a silver lamp post, smoking a silver cigar.

I knew her. The shock of recognition went through me like a lightning bolt. My heart lurched. I moved forward, my eyes wide. "Mom?" I asked.

She didn't react. Didn't see me. She was more beautiful than I remembered, and my vision blurred with tears, and I decided that I hated this place.

A man I didn't recognize approached her, and her features lit up with joy. She ran to him, and I turned away.

We moved off down a long tunnel, walking until the memory of other worlds seemed a dim, uncertain thing. We passed by several side passages, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, for I had dreamed of a place very much like this. I had dreamed it many times.

We walked until we reached the seventh side passage; this we turned down and followed to a locked door that seemed forged from cobwebs and moonlight, but when I touched it, the texture was like steel.

Alec took the key hanging from its peg beside the door and unlocked it with a dull thunk before returning key to peg. "Remember what I told you both," he told Lisa and Aisha.

"Yeah, yeah," Aisha said. "The Pattern is prejudiced against Shadow people. We touch it, we die."

Alec opened the door.

Lisa shuddered. A moment her later, her eyes went wide. "My power's gone," she said.

"I can shut the door and you can wait out here if you want," Alec suggested, but Lisa shook her head.

The floor was black as the empty night at the end of the universe, and upon it shone the Pattern, an intricate maze of curves and lines a hundred yards across at the narrow middle and a hundred and fifty long. The image in my dream had been a blue-white thing, but this one was wrought of a silver-white fire the exact shade of the time-barred stuff of the Hellflame.

"Ready?" Lisa asked.

I was. Doubt would be lethal here, and so I did not doubt. "Yes," I said.

Alec had instructed me in how to walk the Pattern during our journey to Wonderland, and I called his words back to mind now. Once I had set foot on the Pattern, I must not stop until I reach the center. To step off the Pattern was death. To give up midway through the crossing was death. Here, now, I would prove myself a daughter of Amber, or I would be destroyed.

I walked around the edge of the design until I reached the place where it began. I considered the fiery line of its starting point, took a breath, and stepped forward onto the Pattern.

I felt as though I had just been exposed to a mild electrical current. Not enough to shake me, but enough for me to take notice, and the feeling did not go away as I took a second step.

Both my feet were outlined in silver-white sparks. My hair, still painfully short, began to rise as I took a third and fourth.

The line I was following curved back on itself, and ten steps later I began to feel the resistance that Alec had warned me of.

"It gets harder as you go," he'd said, "but there are three places in particular where there are huge difficulty spikes. It gets easier after, but not as much as it got harder. They're called the Three Veils, and each one is harder than the last."

The resistance of the First Veil grew, and some dark thing was pushing back at me for every movement I made forward. I fought it, one step ahead of the next, my eyes upon the glowing and very literal line of power on which I walked. My breath began to quicken with the effort of movement.

All at once, I pushed through, and the resistance eased. The Veil parted, and I felt strange. I was slightly different than I'd been a moment before, but I couldn't have explained how or why. The closest I can come is to say that it seemed that a fog which had shrouded the world my whole life was suddenly lifted, but even that is only a bad approximation of the feeling.

Four more steps. Another curve, more steps along it, and the sparks rose up to my knees. I came to the end of an arc and walked along a straight line, and as I stepped on it, the resistance which had been slowly building surged against me like a wild thing.

The Second Veil.

I saw… I remembered Brockton Bay, mild winters and lazy summers, the smell of the ocean, the docks, the first time I had been afraid to walk in a dangerous neighborhood. Emma. Emma, whom I had loved like a sister and who had betrayed me like one. Emma, with whom I had shared every secret.

Sophia was tormenting me again, striking me with her fists, beating me about the head and neck, and I staggered onward. Madison's honey-sweet voice spoke words that dripped poison. They took turns insulting me, trying to drive me away, and I clenched my teeth and took another step. Shame began to burn within my breast, and I knew that submitting to such treatment was unworthy of a daughter of Amber. My head throbbed, my heart raced; I took a right angle turn and then another, and then another. Another long curve began, and I moved along it as though I were trudging against a strong current. Another step, another, another, and I passed through the Second Veil, and the resistance eased again, though again not so much as it had increased.

A swirling filigree of silver-white flame was next, and I was sweating as I walked it, as the Pattern probed my memories and called forth my darkest moments. I remembered the locker, being trapped, the terror and the smothering dark, cold metal against my skin. I remembered Lung, fire consuming me, the dragon's mocking laughter following me into blessed unconsciousness. I remembered every day of my life and every step that had led me to this place, and I realized that the dreams had been more than dreams: they had been a summons.

There was pain in my head, like a spike of heat driven into my brain. I forced myself along the filigree, and the dimensions of the Pattern seemed to distort before my eyes, expanding and contracting as if seen through a fish-eye lens.

Past the filigree, now. I began the Grand Curve, and the power which gives form and substance to Reality fell upon me like an avalanche. It was changing me, I knew; reforging me, transforming me, and still I walked. I went through three more curves as the heat-spike in my brain doubled and redoubled until I could barely think, barely exist apart from the agony of it. Something screamed. I took another step. Something howled, trying to sever the Connection between us, scrabbling to undo the Entangled neurons by which we were linked.

I saw an enormous multidimensional shape like a whale-god of the oceans between the stars, and it was shedding countless motes of light; I saw an enormous thing, a living monstrosity of extradimensional flesh recoil from me and flee back to the whale-god, its body scored and burned and trailing sparks of silver-white fire as it went; it dwindled into the distance until it became a mote of light indistinguishable from all the others. The Connection was burned out and gone, and the pain in my head gave way to a cold and blessed relief.

I walked on. A straight line, a series of sharp arcs. The sparks rose to my chest and then to my eyes. On. The Final Veil.

The power that shaped the universe broke me down and rebuilt me on a level more fundamental, more elemental than the subatomic, than even the quantum, and I was changed. Another step, and the resistance grew, and grew, and grew, and I could barely see the Pattern beneath me. Time dilated. Time warped. Time stretched and bent. I didn't know if it were by Fate, by Necessity, or by my own choice, but I was no longer a girl, no longer a human being but an act of will, an act of striving against impossible resistance. I felt as though I had always been here, striving against this resistance, and that I always would be.

Then the awareness of myself vanished entirely, and there was only the pure, elemental striving against an utterly immovable force.

Another step. I felt as though I were trying to walk through concrete. Another. Each took an eternity; an eyeblink seemed to last a hundred years of striving.

One more step.

I passed through the Veil. I reached the darkness at the Pattern's center.

I was. I became. I had been transfigured, and now I was myself more fully than ever before; I cried out in exultation, for I had done this thing. I had walked the Pattern, and the power over Shadow was mine.


	12. 2,4 - Pattern

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

2.4 - Pattern

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

I looked back through the silver-white ambient light of the Pattern and strained to see the figures of Aisha, Lisa, and Alec waiting there by that peculiar door, and I called out, "I did it!"

The figures I took to be the girls waved, and Alec called back, "Grats!" Then he pulled something from his pocket, held it up, and began to stare at it; I couldn't make out what it was. "Anyway," he said, "mission accomplished. Peace out."

I didn't understand what he was doing, but Lisa seemed to catch on quick. "Alec, stop," she said.

He looked up from whatever he was studying. "What?"

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Leaving," Alec answered. "Remember the part where I said it was bad if someone found me in this neighborhood?"

I couldn't actually hear most of what they were saying because of the distance, but Lisa filled me in on the particulars after the fact. "We're you going to leave us here?" Lisa asked.

"Um, yeah? Taylor can take you back."

"How about we try the option that doesn't have us running for our lives trying to get down from the magical sky-city before the sun rises and we all die," Aisha said.

My thoughts raced as I regarded his distant form. "Alec," I called, "if you have a way out of here and you don't take them with you, and then see them safely home to Earth Bet - and the same Earth Bet that we came from - you and I are going to have words."

"Whatever," he said. "Grab a shoulder or something.

Lisa grabbed a shoulder. A few moments later, she, Aisha, and Alec disappeared. A rainbow afterimage lingered in their place for a brief time, and then it, too, was gone.

Standing at the center of things, I imagined I could feel the weight of the multiverse radiating outward in every direction and none from the Pattern on which I stood. I considered all that had happened and everything that had led me to this moment. I

considered Alec and whatever strange mode of transportation he had employed to make his escape from this place. Had he been able to teleport all along? Were there conditions to where he could disappear to and when? Had this entire journey been entirely pointless, with him laughing at me the whole time and denying me the use of whatever he had used to depart to make the trip as simple as stepping through a door and then stepping back?

No. From what I knew of Alec, he was far too lazy to have put up with travel for as long as we had if he could have made it easier for himself. I resolved to question him when I saw him again and turned my mind to matters more pressing.

My thoughts turned back to the business at hand. In the circle of darkness at the heart of the Pattern, there was a tension in the air, like an almost-crackle of barely leashed potential. According to Regent, once you had successfully navigated the Pattern, it could take you anywhere; you had only to command it and visualize your destination, and you would instantly be teleported to it.

But where to go? I could go home, certainly. With an act of will, I could be safe and warm in my bed and all of this behind me. I could command the Pattern to take me to Middle-Earth, get some mithril armor and weapons and be trained in the art of dragonslaying. I could go to the resting place of the Lance of Saint George the Dragonslayer and take up his weapon against Lung. I could take revenge on a thousand alternate versions of Emma and her friends. I could gather me up fantastic wealth and become a billionaire, though I suspected that would be more complicated than it seemed at first glance. I could forget Earth Bet entirely and go live in some fantastic world I had only seen in books or on television: tour the United Federation of Planets, indulge with The Culture, see the glory days of the Jedi and the Republic, visit Rincewind and Granny Weatherwax. Or I could find wholly new places never before imagined, with wondrous vistas and beautiful inhabitants unseen by any other human eye. And all of that had no small appeal, but it wasn't what I wanted most.

'Your mother didn't tell you anything, did she?'

I wasn't sure it would work. I had no image in my mind for the place I wanted to go and had never been there before. Regent had said I needed to visualize the destination or it wouldn't work, but I still had to try.

"Can you take me where I can learn about my mother?" I wondered aloud.

The Pattern didn't answer. The air crackled with potential. The walls of the cavern began to grow dim; the sun was rising. The city of Tir na Nog'th would soon disappear.

I made the effort of will. I commanded the Pattern to take me to where I could learn about my mother. My feet began to sink into the floor.

I disappeared. I reappeared. It felt more like blinking my eyes than like teleporting. There was no sensation of movement, just a sudden shift of my surroundings. I was in the Chamber of the Pattern in Tir na Nog'th, a study in black and silver, city of dream and moonlight; I was in someone's bedroom, and the sudden presence of full color was all the more vivid and shocking for its absence in that other place.

It was an ornate place with intricate patterns wrought into the decorations. It was cold, and a fireplace stood in disuse against one wall to the right of the bed. The bed had a high canopy with curtains that could be drawn about it; it sat at the end of a carpet over a wood floor. There were paintings beside the fireplace depicting unfamiliar people and places; tapestries decorated the wall behind the bed. A stool on which a servant might have once sat was beneath the paintings. Against the third wall a closet, door open, and full of the most amazing dresses, tunics, breeches, skirts, blouses, dozens of pairs of shoes of every description each arranged in its place, and though many colors could be seen therein, at least half the selection of clothing was some combination of black and silver; a silver vanity stood between the closet and a closed door.

Two windows allowed light into the room, though both were shuttered and the light was dim. The bed was neatly made, and on the pillow had been placed a single silver rose. I drew near to it, and as I did I saw that it was no fake but a real rose, albeit one with a silver colored blossom.

This was where the Pattern had sent me to learn about my mother, but if this was her room, I didn't recognize her in it. I moved around the room, exploring. I left the rose alone, but when I went into the walk-in closet, it seemed to me that all the clothing was about the right size to have fit Mom.

The closed door on the side of the room led into a bathroom. By which I mean it was a room with a beautiful bathtub, black with silver tracery. There was a hand pump for the bath, and when I gave it a few pumps it poured steaming hot water into the tub. A second pump was set into a sink before a polished mirror. If there was a toilet, it wasn't immediately obvious.

I left the bathroom, then, and exited the bedroom through a second door, this one in the wall opposite the bed. I found myself in a sort of living room. There was another fireplace here, and several couches and chairs; all of them looked very comfortable. There were bookshelves that went all the way up to the room's high ceiling, and they were packed with books, though I couldn't read the titles; I didn't know the language they were written in. A pair of swords were hung on the wall above a deadly looking axe, and a suit of jet-black plate mail armor was on a stand in a corner. There were four windows, all of them shuttered, but between them they let in enough light to make the room seem bright compared to the dimness of the bedroom.

The books seemed more like Mom, though without being able to read the language I couldn't be certain. I continued my search of the place, and I turned up several bottles of wine, a number of books I couldn't read, a number of papers with what could have been Mom's handwriting on them, though it was hard to be sure given the unfamiliar language they were written in. Finally, a search of a trunk tucked away in a corner produced something that seemed at least vaguely familiar; an antique pack of cards in a beautiful wooden case. There was a design on the case and on the back of each card: a white unicorn on a field of green, rearing, facing to the dexter.

The cards were of the order of Tarots. The suites were cups, swords, coins, and wands. They were cold to the touch, and each card was marvelous to look upon, each a work of art, but the Major Trumps took the artistry to another level entirely. I thumbed through the Trumps, looking at each one in turn. The first were two places I didn't recognize: a palatial hall and a city square. The third was an impressive man who might have been anywhere from early forties to mid fifties, his hair dark but his temples touched with grey. The fourth was an older man, a dwarf, and hunchbacked. He was grey-bearded and wild-eyed, and I had no idea what he was supposed to represent. Really that was true of all of the Major Trumps, as none of them were labelled.

I thumbed past an assortment of men of varying appearances: a few were fair haired, two were redheads, several had dark hair; some were pale, some ruddy, and one had skin the same shade as Aisha's; all of them looked to be exactly the same age, all of them neither old nor young, and each was very handsome, though few were handsome in exactly the same way as the others. The last of these, a serious looking man in black and silver, had a cloak clasped with a silver rose, and I hesitated when I saw it.

Next was a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes dressed in green and grey, and she, too, looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty; she was stunningly beautiful, and neither old nor young nor a mixture of both, but a woman fully mature.

I put the blonde woman's card with the ones depicting the men and regarded the next card in the sequence, and my breath caught in my throat.

Mom.

The image on the next card was a picture of Mom.

My eyes blurred with tears, and I blinked them away as I stared at her picture. She was dressed in a black gown with a silver belt, her skin was pale as it had ever been, her eyes bluer than robin's eggs, her hair black as the night and so much like my own had been before Lung had burned me, so much like what mine would be again in time. There came a tightness in my chest, and my breath began to come in gasps.

Love, pain, resentment, warmth, fondness, sorrow, and sudden joy all mixed together as I looked once more upon the face of the woman who had given me life. I smiled, and tears rolled down my cheeks.

I don't know how long I stared at her face in that image, but after a time the card grew colder in my hand, and the sensation shook me from my trance. I put Mom's card with the others and looked at the one that came next, and I wondered if these were paintings of Mom's family.

The next card was a woman with fiery red hair dressed all in green, purple and lavender. She had green eyes and a complexion like mother of pearl, and despite the initial association in my mind with Emma, as I studied her picture, I saw more and more the similarities between her and Mom. They had the same jawline, the same shape of their eyes. Like Mom and like the blonde woman, she, too, was somewhere around thirty. Like Mom and like the blonde woman, too, this woman was beautiful.

The card grew colder in my hand as I stared at it, and this time I didn't immediately shuffle it away. The cold grew mildly uncomfortable, and still I studied the card, examining the background, the artist's mark, the white inverted pentacle held in the woman's hand with an inverted pentagram inside the pentagon at its center, which she held up against the background of a starless sky.

The image grew clearer, more real as I watched. Something in me - my worse if wiser nature - screamed at me to put it away, but I continued to stare. Then the woman on the card turned her head, looked me directly in the eye, and asked, "Who?"

I dropped the deck, and cards fluttered everywhere.

My heart beat like a drum. I was certain that I had been discovered, that I needed to get out of here. I took hold of the stuff of Shadow, and…

Nothing. I could still feel the universe around me, but it steadfastly refused to change in accordance with my will. The sensation of the universe's blind indifference to my attempt to reshape it to my desire was deeply disconcerting, and I swallowed an expletive.

I gathered up the fallen cards, then, scrambling to pick them all up and put them back in their case. It was silly, but I was panicking. I felt like a little girl struggling to clean up the mess she had made of her mother's makeup case, and my cheeks burned the whole while. I was in the process of collecting a card that had slipped beneath the couch when there came a knock at the door.

I froze. My eyes darted left and right in search of a hiding spot. The trunk? I would never fit. My eyes went to the suit of armor, and I had a brief vision of being discovered a quarter of the way into putting it on. I would have to hide in the bedroom. I turned, began to move.

The door unlocked and swung open, and the red-haired woman from the card stood upon the threshold. She looked the same; she hadn't aged a day since the making of that miniature portrait. Her eyes flashed when she saw me running for the bedroom door. She gestured with one hand and spoke a word I didn't understand, and my arms and legs went completely numb.

I did not land gracefully.

She crossed the room and lifted my head with her left hand to see my face; her right hand she held close to her body, fingers splayed, and something like heat distortion radiated out from the tips of each of her perfectly manicured fingers.

Whatever she saw in my face startled her. She looked at me as though she were looking at a ghost. Then the expression just sort of went away, her face moving into a neutral mask. "Who are you?" she asked.

"You can call me S," I tried to say. What actually came out was, "My name is Taylor Hebert." That definitely wasn't what I'd intended, and my eyes narrowed. Damn it. How many people was I going to run into who had some kind of Master effect that compelled me to tell the truth? It was incredibly annoying.

"Why did you come here?" she asked.

"I asked the Pattern to send me where I could learn about my mother," I told her, and again it was not what I'd intended to say.

She stepped closer, looking into my eyes in a disconcerting fashion. I don't know if whatever she found there satisfied her, but she seemed to come to a conclusion. "Which one is your mother, girl?" she asked.

There was no compulsion behind her voice this time, but I was pretty sure she already knew the answer. I produced the Tarot card with Mom's picture on it and held it up for her to see.

"You came for no other reason? You have no designs against the realm, against myself, nor any of my brothers or sisters?"

I shook my head, wondering all the while where the hell the Pattern had sent me and what sort of place it was. "None," said I. "I came to learn about my Mom. That's all."

"I see," she said. "And you felt it was both proper and necessary to invade the privacy of a stranger to get your answers? To arrive like a thief in the night and rummage through someone's personal belongings with no regard for anyone's desires but your own?"

Wait, what? No. That isn't what I'd done. Was it? "I…" That, now that I actually thought about it, was absolutely what I had just done. I'd just assumed it was fine to do so because this was where the Pattern had sent me. "That isn't what I meant to do," I said, and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"I believe you," she replied.

That was how I met my Aunt Fiona. It was not the most dignified of introductions, to be sure, but it served, and I'd be dead a dozen times over if not for her. I owe her, and both of us know it.

After introducing herself, she took me to her own rooms across the hall, and a servant brought up a loaf of fresh bread, some cold cuts, a hunk of cheese, and a few pieces of fruit. I didn't understand the language she spoke to the servant, but she switched back to English once the servant had departed. Then Fiona opened a bottle of white wine with a dog logo on it and bade me to eat and drink, and then to tell her the story of how I had come to Castle Amber.

I made myself a sandwich with what had been brought, and it was good, but the wine tasted like a bunch of grapes had peed into a cup. The face I made when I first sipped at it amused her, at least, but when I asked for water, she shook her head. "Tea, perhaps, but you should not drink any water that has not been boiled while you are here," she said.

"I would love a cup of tea," I told her, and she smiled.

"Drink your wine, Taylor," she told me.

I did, and it was awful.

Once I had eaten and drunk, Fiona filled a cast iron kettle from her sink and put it on a hook suspended above the fire in her fireplace, and I told her everything.

Well. Almost everything. I left out the fact that Alec was an Amberite himself and just left him in my story as a skilled if lazy sorcerer, but I told her of Earth Bet, of my initial forays into heroism, of Lung and my recovery, of the dreams of the Pattern and the accidental Shifts I had caused. I told her of the alternate Earth Bet, of Pyewacket and the Slaughterhouse Nine, of our escape from that place and return home. Then I told her of the journey to Wonderland, my adventures in that place, and of how I came first to walk the Pattern in Tir na Nog'th, and then how I came to be in the room in which she found me.

The kettle was singing before I was a quarter of the way through my tale, and Fiona rose, removed it from the hearth, and prepared two cups of tea, which we both sipped as I continued. Occasionally she interrupted to ask a question or to have a point clarified, but otherwise she listened attentively.

"Well," said she when I was done. "I am impressed that you were able to come so far and to do as well as you have prior to the stabilizing ritual of walking the Pattern."

"Stabilizing ritual?" I asked

Fiona nodded, but she didn't elaborate. "Your mother told you nothing of Amber, of the Pattern, nor of Shadow?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No. Maybe she meant to someday, but there was a car accident, and…"

Fiona's gaze grew sharp. "Car accident?"

"Um," I said, "a car is kind of a horseless carriage that -"

She held up a hand. "I know what a car is," she said.

"Oh."

"Can you describe this accident?" she asked.

It seemed morbid and uncomfortable, but I gave her the details.

"I see," she said, and looked thoughtful. There was no sadness in her bearing, no grief, and I wondered what kind of relationship she'd had with Mom if news of Mom's death didn't seem to bother her at all. I wanted to call it out, but I held my tongue.

"I suppose it's too much to hope that you've been tutored in magic, fencing, and how to fend for yourself in the wilderness."

"I can fight bare handed," I said a little defensively. "I've been taking lessons at several local dojos back home."

"That is something, at least," she mused.

Just when I was starting to feel offended, she looked up, and beneath her gaze my offense melted. "It may be for the best, all things considered. Taylor of a Shadow Earth, there are things which one of our blood must know if she is to survive walking in Shadow. Do you want to learn them?"

All things considered? What did she mean by that? I was starting to dislike my newly discovered aunt, but I didn't make a snap judgment. I thought about it, considered it in light of all that I knew and in the dark of all I knew I had yet to learn. My first inclination was to tell her to go to hell, but I forced it down in favor of actually considering whether I needed instruction in the use of my power now that I had walked the Pattern.

Yes, I believed that I did. I didn't want to have anyone in a position of authority over me ever again, but I would swallow my pride for power's sake. Then Alec's warnings about trusting family rang anew in my ears, and I resolved that even if I were to learn from my Aunt Fiona, I would never let my guard down around her. "All things considered," I said, "yes. I want to learn."

"Then if you do as I bid and apply yourself diligently to my lessons, I will not abuse that obedience and will teach as best I can. And when you have learned enough to survive on your own, I will tell you all that you wish to know of your mother. Are we agreed?"

"Agreed," I said.

She rose to her feet, and her green dress shimmered in the firelight, purple and lavender notes revealing themselves only when the light glinted off it just so. Then Fiona of Amber took my hand and spoke the words to seal our pact as teacher and student, and I shuddered to hear them.

So began my training.


	13. 2,5 - Pattern

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

2.5 - Pattern

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

You know how people always say that knowledge is power, but they rarely mean it as anything more than a trite truism, and the systems of education don't actually have any intention of transferring power from one generation to the next? This was different. In my instruction with Fiona of Amber, that saying was not so much a trite truism as a literal truth: Fiona was teaching me Power.

I learned. It was easy; it was the most difficult thing I had ever done. Fiona was unlike any of the teachers I had ever known. She was never unsure of herself, never seemed to hesitate. She wasn't trying to be my friend, she had no patience for fools, and I had no desire to prove myself one. She taught me to walk in Shadow, how to speak Thari, how to fence and to shoot a bow, the basics of sorcery and of the Trumps, how to twine garrote wire into a braid such that it is both difficult to spot and easy to free when you need it; I learned how to invade the mind of another and how to defend my own, how to dress for a particular effect, how to behave in court, how to be an Amberite and not a frightened, uncertain girl from Brockton Bay and vice versa.

Some lessons were harder than others. Sorcery and fencing came easily, almost effortlessly; social interactions less so. The fact that they had a formalized structure to them made it easier than it might have been, but something in me still wanted to squeak in terror and find a nice dark corner to hide in for the rest of forever at the thought of being presented to the King and Queen of Amber,

My aunt Fiona was strange. She didn't believe in hiding her feelings; she wielded them as weapons instead.

I think I hated her.

Our first argument came quickly. She wanted to keep me in Amber for a year to be fully trained in everything she believed a young woman of the royal house of Amber needed to know before she could strike out on her own into Shadow, and I took that badly.

"There's no way I can stay here that long!" I exclaimed too loudly for our surroundings.

She didn't raise her voice in response. "Oh? Why is that?"

"Because my home is back on Earth Bet," I said. "I have school, and being a hero, and…"

"What you learn here will profit you far more than what you might learn in school," she said, "and you will be able to act as a vigilante far more effectively after a year's time in my tutelage than you can now."

"Can't you teach me on Earth Bet?"

"I think not," Fiona said. "I have other obligations. Other priorities. I may be able to go there and give you the occasional lesson, but I cannot give you what you need on your Death World.

"I can't just abandon my life there," I said.

"In fact you can. It's easy. All you need do is not return. In a little time, perhaps a century or two, you'll barely remember you ever came from a place in Shadow called Earth Bet."

I looked up sharply. "A century or two?"

Fiona understood what I was really asking. She nodded. "Mortals, born of woman, are few of days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away, like fleeting shadows, they do not endure." She was quoting something, but I didn't know what. "We are not like them, Taylor. We do not wither. We are Substance and not Shadow. Unless you are slain by violence, by accident, or by a disease severe enough to overcome even an Amberite's powers of regeneration, the days of your life need have no end."

I could hear my heartbeat as a pounding in my ears. A cold chill ran down my spine, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Hearing that I could live forever was terrifying; hearing that I could still die was equally terrifying. For the space of several heartbeats I felt as though I were suspended between Eternity and Oblivion. I felt the way I had felt when I'd read Tuck Everlasting for the first time, and it had scared me half to death, and Mom had come and sat down on my bed and talked to me about life and death, and it had helped.

She wasn't here to help me now.

I shuddered. "My Dad…" I began.

"Will be gone in a little while," Fiona said.

A few moments passed in silence as she gave me the time to think. At last I pushed it all away to freak me out at some later time and said, "I'm not going to abandon my Dad. And Earth Bet may be awful sometimes, but it's my home." There was more stubbornness behind my words than conviction, but stubbornness can often get you through when conviction is lacking.

"Then listen well, Taylor of Earth Bet," Fiona said. "I will take you to some distant Shadow where time flows more quickly relative to your home. I will instruct you in the time we have there, perhaps two months if I can find a good differential in a suitable location. Then I will return you home with a tutor who can continue your training on Earth Bet during the times I am unable to attend to you. Are you satisfied?"

I nodded. "Thank you," I said.

She laughed. "You say that now. In a month's time you will curse the day we met."

I started to smile, but I stopped when I realized she wasn't actually joking. "Thanks anyway," I said.

It began. Fiona did as she had suggested, spiriting me away to some far distant place in Shadow and there began my abbreviated, belated education.

I learned.

We had come to a place of twilight, a desolate mountain crag where the western sky remained dark and filled with strange stars while eastern sky gleamed with the promise of sunrise. We made our camp in a clearing near a small mountain stream full of clear, cold water. It was cold but not unbearable, and the peaks above us glittered with snow, and there we spent the first full month of my training without interruption.

"What was my mother's name? Her real name, I mean."

A month of training, and the sky never changed. The night hung heavily on the west, the east still glowed with the promise of a dawn that never came. I had quickly lost track of time beneath that unchanging sky, but Fiona never had any difficulty. I had done well, and my Aunt had decided to reward my diligence with the right to ask questions.

"Deirdre," she answered.

I mulled the name over in my thoughts, but I didn't feel anything from it. It didn't feel like it was hers. "What was she like when you knew her?"

Fiona smiled. "Competitive," she answered. "She was the girl who was determined not to be outdone by our brothers in fighting, in athletic games. The warrior princess of Amber who held herself as equal to any man. She loved books, she spurned countless suitors who sought to tame her, and she had Corwin wrapped around her finger, of course."

"Corwin?" I asked.

Fiona looked at me. "You said your father's name was Daniel? What did he look like?"

I described Dad to her, and if the description meant something to Fiona, I couldn't tell what.

"And Daniel is your biological father?"

I nodded.

Fiona pursed her lips. "Corwin is one of your uncles," she said. "He and Deirdre were always close."

I didn't really see what that had to do with her questions about my father, but I let it go anyway. "Were you and my mom close?"

"Close as the bitterest enemies," Fiona replied. "Few of us ever got along, even when we were children, and things were worse when we grew older."

I wasn't sure how to feel about that. I had been an only child, so I had no experience of what it might or ought to be like having siblings.

"You said that men came to tame her?" I was sure I wasn't going to like where this went, but I asked anyway.

Fiona nodded. "For the better part of a hundred years suitors came from every part of the Golden Circle to woo and tame the wild warrior-princess of Amber. This was after Corwin had disappeared, and I suspect that our father only permitted it because it amused him to see her suitors fail."

Fiona seemed more amused by the memory than anything else, and I stared at her a moment trying to decide if she was telling a joke.

I had this sinking feeling that she wasn't.

"You're serious?" I asked.

"Yes."

"What if she had fallen for one of them? What if they'd manipulated her into agreeing and…"

Fiona's laughter was like the peal of silver bells. "Your mother was a Princess of Amber," she said. "No mortal man could be her equal, still less her better. She was a wolf pursued by lambs."

And once again, I had no idea what to say. I was somewhere between being horrified by my aunt and my grandfather's attitude and being mildly impressed by I wasn't sure what.

"You come from a place where things are different," she said. "I've never been to your Earth, but I've been to Earth. I do understand."

I let out a slow breath. "I'm trying not to judge," I said, "but…"

"Culture shock," Fiona said, and I nodded.

The word wasn't exactly right for describing how I felt, but it was close enough, and it gave me an out from having to examine my feelings any more closely than I already had.

There were other nights like that, other talks, but what I remember most about that time was the silences. Sometimes Fiona would depart and return after a day had passed, and I'd be expected to have completed whatever tasks she'd given me before she left. There were long hours in which I had no company but the wind in the trees, the cold, the stars, the eternal gleam of dawn in the eastern sky. Sometimes I went for walks on the trails around our camp as I puzzled over some magical process Fiona had given me to analyze or unwind.

On one of those walks, I found Morningstar.

He was large, winged, and only half of him was flesh: the other half was the same stone as the mountainside. He turned his lightning-scarred face and regarded me as I approached, and his eyes were a color that I could never remember afterward. "Good morning, Taylor," he said, and his voice was deep but gentle. Inhuman but beautiful. He wasn't speaking English, but I understood him perfectly. It was as though his words were shaped not of syllables but of raw meaning.

I was not so jaded yet that the sight of his horned visage didn't make me gasp. He reminded me a little bit of Chernabog from Night on Bald Mountain, but his face and his eyes were kind rather than cruel. "How do you know my name?" I asked.

"I know many things. I know your name because I have watched the cycle of evaporation and precipitation. I see the formation of clouds, the movement of stars, air currents, the migration of animals and the turn of the seasons. I feel the water beneath the land and the wind and the air you displace with your presence. I sense the magic you wield and the power of Order and of Chaos in your bloodline. From these things I know that you are Taylor Hebert, and you have come here from very far away. You are an outsider in this one-half world, neither lightsider nor darksider."

"You're a Thinker," I surmised.

"After a fashion. I have little to do but to think and to observe. I have spent a long time getting very good at it."

"I see," I said. "What's your name?"

"My name can no longer be spoken in this realm or any other. But you may call me Morningstar."

That name - or was it a title? - was ringing alarm bells in my head, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. "Hello, Morningstar," I said. "What are you doing out here by yourself?"

"I am waiting for the dawn."

I looked to the eastern sky, still seemingly unchanged since my arrival in this place with Fiona. Did this planet rotate after all? "How long have you been waiting for it?"

"Since the Great Machine was forged in the heart of the world," he answered, and I had no idea what that meant. "Longer than recorded history," he amended.

Okay. So maybe the planet wasn't rotating after all. Or it was rotating on the geologic time scale. "Are you being punished for something? I asked.

"It is not justice which binds me here, but pity."

Pity? How could pity turn him half to stone and fixed on a mountain to wait for a dawn that would never come? "Whose pity?"

Morningstar did not answer, and despite his apparent trapped condition, I was starting to get nervous about being so close to what looked like a huge winged demon, kind face or no kind face. "Well," I said. "I should get back. It was nice meeting you, Morningstar."

He watched me leave. Those eyes whose color defied recollection followed me until I was out of view. I had a creeping feeling that they followed me after that, too, but I could no longer see them do it.

Though it seemed foolish, I found myself returning to him again and again over the course of my training. I often came and sheltered against the night wind in the shadow of his wings when Fiona had given me a particularly difficult magical operation to puzzle out. I'm not sure why. Maybe I just needed someone to talk to, and Fiona wasn't going to be it: I had a suspicion that anything I told her she would eventually use against me. But Morningstar was kind, and I told him of Brockton Bay and Earth Bet, and he told me what he had seen in the wind and the shapes of the clouds and how the ripples of causation from even the tiniest happenings could grow to shake the palaces of gods and kings.

During one of my visits, Morningstar looked in the direction of camp and asked, "Does your teacher know that you come here?". We were speaking Thari to each other now: the language of Amber. My vocabulary wasn't as good as I wanted, but I was improving every day.

"Don't you already know from the pattern of a cloud or the texture of the wind?" I asked. Oh, good. Sarcasm totally translated into Thari.

"I see much, but not all. Your mistress is clouded to me."

Mistress? I didn't like his word choice there, but I didn't correct it. Did Fiona know I was coming to see Morningstar whenever I got the chance? An image came to me of Fiona watching with disapproval even now, and I shivered. "Probably," I said. "She pays attention. I'd be more surprised if she didn't know."

"I think so, too," he said.

I was more wary when I left the camp after that, and took circuitous routes, but Fiona never mentioned a word, never gave any indication that she knew about my friend. Until the last day.

That final twilight, I dreamed that a vampire came upon our camp in the twilight to kill me and drink my blood. When I woke I saw the unmoving corpse of a pale, regal man lying in front of my tent. There was nothing obviously wrong with him that he should be dead, but his canines were elongated into fangs, and he smelled like an old, musty tomb.

I stepped over the corpse, did my morning ablutions, and went about assisting Fiona in the tasks of that last day, of packing up our camp and getting ready to depart. She used a spell to re-bury the latrine, and I took down and packed up the tents.

Neither of us mentioned the dead vampire.

When the packing was done and all our supplies were loaded into the cart, Fiona turned to me and said, "We'll meet your tutor soon. Lead the way to Morningstar's perch, please."

My heart skipped several beats. I had suspected she had known, but to have it suddenly confirmed was still deeply disconcerting. Even so, I didn't protest and I didn't say anything, nor offer any explanation beyond the twilight's cold for my reddened cheeks, but turned and led the way.

"What do you think of him?" Fiona asked.

There were several responses that came to mind, but I ultimately answered her question with a question of my own, and one that had been bothering me for a while now, but I'd never actually asked of Morningstar himself. "Is he Satan?"

The corner of Fiona's lips twitched upward into a smile. "Yes," she said.

I swallowed. "Oh."

It took a little while for the notion to sink in that I had befriended the Devil. Though if he really was the Devil, then the stories must have gotten a whole lot of it wrong, because he was nothing like people said, and trapped between stone and flesh on some mountain crag to wait for a dawn that would never come seemed a far cry from ruling over all the demons of hell.

"Does that change your opinion of him?" Fiona asked.

I shook my head. "No," I lied.

Fiona didn't call me on it, but the lie was obvious enough that she didn't need to.

We went the rest of the way in silence, and the shadow of some winged thing passed over us as we walked, its form black against the stars.

Morningstar was not alone when we arrived. A man was with him, tall and slim and leanly muscular. His hair was black, his complexion swarthy, his clean shaven features handsomely aquiline. He was dressed all in grey save for the black cloak that was draped over his right shoulder, and his smile when he saw us failed to put me at ease. "Hello, Fiona."

"Hello, John." Fiona said. Then she turned to Morningstar, bent her knees and bowed her head. "Good morning, Morningstar."

"Good morning," Morningstar replied.

"I hope I'm not interrupting, but I need to speak to John."

Morningstar shook his head. "By all means."

"I'm afraid I am occupied by a bit of vengeance today," John said. "Would you mind putting off whatever this is a few years hence?"

"Vengeance is like wine," she replied. "It improves with time, and you've no shortage of that. By the oath you swore, and in repayment for favors past, you will aid me now."

He sighed as someone sorely put upon. "Very well. What shall I do for you?"

Fiona indicated me. "Taylor, this is John Shade. John, this is Taylor, my apprentice."

"Nice to meet you," I said, and offered a handshake.

He took my hand, but it wasn't for a handshake. He bowed toward my extended hand and brushed my knuckles with his lips.

I froze there for what felt like all of eternity, my cheeks slowly growing warm.

"The pleasure is mine," he said. Then he winked. "Call me Jack."

I started to stammer something. Then Fiona intervened. "Call him John," she said.

His eyes flicked sideways to regard her for the span of a heartbeat, and the cold chill that went down my spine in that moment erased any lingering sign of my blushing.

"What do you want?" John asked.

"My apprentice needs a tutor in the mystical arts," Fiona said. "One who can come with us to her homeland, and who can help her when I can't."

John smiled. It was a cold, thin thing, and it reminded me of a snake, or of a razorblade, and as he stood there with the Devil at his back, silhouetted against a dawn that would never come, I wondered not for the first time exactly what the hell I had signed up for.


	14. 3,1 - Steer Your Way

**To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

3.1 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to [USER=321191]Cailin[/USER] for beta-reading.

The journey home was almost disappointingly easy. We returned to the cart; on the way, Fiona happened to locate a pair of horses wandering the mountain. A short time spent calming them, and we led them back to pull the cart with our gear. The journey home took several days, but I made sure that all of it was downhill along a gentle slope, which made things easier. The price of that gentle slope was an on-again, off-again precipitation that was more of a mist than a rainfall, and we were all a little soggy by the end of the first day, but the not-quite rain lifted during the night, and the rest of the trip was pleasantly warm.

In time the unceasing downward slope became the slopes of the foothills surrounding Brockton Bay, and our destination gleamed upon the water. The eternal twilight of the half-world gave way to dawn, and in that light of day the earth and sky were renewed. The breeze had cut the haze of smog that might have otherwise hidden the Protectorate Rig in the bay, and water and forcefield alike sparkled with reflected light.

John Shade watched the sun's progress as if he had never before seen a sunrise; and in that revelatory light, he had no shadow.

When we reached the city limits, Fiona bid us dismount. "I have a few things to take care of," she told me. "Papers to have done up for John, arrangements to make for you. Then I'm back to Amber."

"How long?" I asked.

"Two and half days here for every day in Amber," she reminded me. "Expect me within a fortnight."

She left us on the side of the road. Then she drew reign and guided the horses away, and the sound of the cart's wheels on the concrete faded.

People stared, but not at me. I had changed my clothes into something appropriate for Earth Bet as part of the shift from the half-world, but John drew his black cloak about him and smiled at the attention. Then he said, "I'll have a look around the town. Call my name when you need me. My real name. I'll hear you."

His real name was the one Fiona had told me not to get in the habit of using: Shadowjack. Or Jack of Shadows. Jack, Whose Name is Spoken in Shadow if you wanted to be formal about it. I was pretty sure he wasn't human, but I wasn't in a position to throw stones about that.

"Try not to get arrested," I muttered, and he laughed.

Then I was alone, and on my way home, and the world around me seemed very, very ordinary.

So childe Taylor to the Bay of Brockton came. ... Wait. No. That wasn't nearly overblown and self-important enough. How about something more like: Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Brockton Bay and environs.

Yeah. Perfect.

The house was a mess. Dirty dishes in the sink, empty takeout boxes overflowing from a garbage can that should have been emptied a week ago, floors in need of cleaning, and the living room was worse.

Dad was asleep on the couch, his glasses askew. He was still wearing his work clothes, he smelled of sweat, his hair was lank and greasy, and he hadn't shaved.

Guilt came first. Then anger that I should feel guilty for leaving him. Then I saw the new lines of care on his brow, and anger subsided into pity. I turned away from his sleeping form, brought down a blanket, and lay it around him.

He woke as I did this, looked up, stared blearily. Recognition flickered in his eyes, and then he sat up all at once, the motion sending his glasses tumbling to the floor. "Taylor!" he exclaimed.

He moved as if to hug me, hesitated too long, stopped short. He stared at me, some uncertainty building behind his eyes. "Is it really you?"

My hair, while still painfully short, was longer than the two weeks that had passed from his perspective would have allowed for; my skin had gone pale after two months in twilight, and I had put on muscle, but surely he would still recognize me. "Hi, Dad," I said.

He smiled like the sun coming out from behind storm clouds. We hugged, and some of the worry-lines in his face eased away.

I wanted to tell him what I'd learned about Mom, that I'd met my Aunt Fiona, that I'd walked the Pattern and could reshape the universe if I wanted. An angrier, more resentful part of me didn't want to say a damned thing. I wanted to sarcastically ask him if he planned to fall apart every time I went out of town for a week or two. I wanted to say I was sorry for worrying him, that I wouldn't do it again. What I said was, "Anything happen while I was gone?"

He didn't say anything for a long moment. And then, "Oh, the usual."

I could have let the conversation die then. It's what I would have done before. But I wasn't the same as I'd been before. I had been remade. The Pattern had remade me, and Fiona had taught me; I looked my dad in the eye. "We have a lot to talk about," I said, "but it can wait until after breakfast. I'm going to go take a shower, okay?"

"Okay," Dad said, and stood up. There was a crunching noise, and we both looked down.

His glasses. He had stepped on them, and the left lens was cracked. "Damn it," he hissed, and bent down to pick it up.

"That's not an omen," I said.

Dad put his cracked glasses on, but the frame was bent and it no longer rested easily on the bridge of his nose. "An omen?" he asked, and he had no idea what I was talking about.

"It isn't one," I insisted.

"Right," he said, and regarded me with a raised eyebrow.

I went upstairs and took my shower. After, I dried my hair - now long enough to qualify for looking like a pixie-cut - and refreshed my clothing out of Shadow. Halfway through straightening up my room, I realized that I was avoiding the issue. Firming my resolve, I did a thing more difficult than learning sorcery, harder than fighting a jabberwock, and more trying in some ways than walking the Pattern of Amber itself: I went downstairs to have a conversation with my Dad.

It went about as well as could be expected. We ate breakfast, and then we relocated to the living room. I told him about the journey, walking the Pattern, learning from Mom's sister. A strange expression came over his face when I mentioned Aunt Fiona. "Did you know about her?" I asked.

Dad shook his head. "Your Mom never mentioned a Fiona. She didn't talk about her family very much. I know she had a sister named Flora who she hated, but I'd never met any of them. She…" he swallowed. "She said there'd been a falling out."

"I don't actually know the full story," I said. "Fiona said she would be here within a fortnight, though, and we can ask her then. She also sent a tutor along with me."

"Oh?"

I nodded. "That's the other thing I wanted to talk about. Don't freak out, okay?"

Dad waited.

"Shadowjack," I said. "Jack of Shadows. Jack, come to me."

There was a strange expression on Dad's face. Then a long-fingered hand emerged from the shadow of the coffee table.

Dad jumped, whirled, staggered backward, yelled in fright.

A second hand, and then arms, a head, a torso; John Shade emerged from the shadow as a human might emerge from a swimming pool, and the shadow rippled in his wake.

Dad grabbed the poker from beside the fireplace and swung it at John's head.

John moved, caught the blow on the meat of his forearm. There was a sound of impact, but no crack of broken bones. He met Dad's gaze, and then the shadows swallowed him.

Dad's eyes darted about, seeking the intruder. "Wh… where is he?"

"Everywhere," John answered. "Nowhere." There was no direction to the sound of his voice, and it echoed in ways the shape of the room didn't allow for.

"Dad, stop," I said, and it wasn't John Shade whose safety I was worried about. "That's my tutor. Stop. I told you not to freak out."

John was there. He came out of the shadow cast by a bookshelf; it wasn't blackness that he emerged from, but out of the dimness of an object that interrupted a light source. "John, no…" I started, and then he seized my dad from behind, pinning Dad's arms in a painful looking joint lock. The poker fell to the ground.

"STOP," I thundered.

Dad froze. John didn't.

"Why should I stop?" John asked. "He attacked me, Taylor. I am a guest in his home, and he attacked. Why should I not pay him back?"

My heart raced. The room seemed to grow brighter, and everything that wasn't John Shade and my dad just wasn't important anymore. Almost without realizing it I invoked the image of the Pattern in the way Fiona had taught. It shone in the air before my outstretched hand, bringing with it the ability to perceive mystical forces in action.

Earth-Bet existed within an extremely low-magic universe, but that mattered not at all to me, for I held the image of the Pattern before me. The walls of reality shifted in response to my will, resonating through the Pattern before me and its mirror within me, and raw power came. It wasn't focused into a spell, for I had none prepared, and its use would would tire me quickly, but it came.

It was a mistake. When I changed the constants of the universe around me to allow for magic, it worked for John as well as for me. His eyes gleamed as he, too, drew in power from places beyond Earth Bet. The light grew brighter, the shadows darker, the separation between the two more distinct.

Dad struggled ineffectually; Shadowjack had a hand to my Dad's throat, and neither force of arms nor mystical might would stop him if he chose to kill.

"That's my dad, John," I said through gritted teeth.

"What is that to me?" he asked. It wasn't spoken callously, but almost curiously.

My thoughts raced. I called to mind everything Fiona had told me of Shadowjack to prepare me for dealing with him. I knew there was no use appealing to his sympathy, for he had none; no use asking for mercy which he might or might not give if it amused him to do so. That left only a few options. "He didn't realize you were a guest," I said through gritted teeth. "Guests usually come in through the front door. It was an easy mistake to make. And if you kill my dad, I'll be very angry with you."

My voice cracked as I spoke that last sentence, and in that moment, I knew that If he even hurt Dad, I would kill him, and not just once: I'd do it however many times I had to in order to make sure it stuck. If he killed Dad? I didn't know how yet, but I would make him suffer as few have suffered since the times of Old Night, when Chaos was all.

John held Dad a moment longer as he considered my words. "I suppose I understand his mistake," he said. Then he dropped Dad, stepped away, and grinned. "And it isn't the most violent greeting I've ever received from a maiden's father when he saw me with her in his home."

His joke did nothing to reduce my anger.

Dad coughed, and his return to his feet was an unsteady and careful affair. "Who is this, Taylor?" he asked.

I indicated John. "Dad, this is John Shade. My tutor."

Dad's eyes narrowed.

"John," I continued, "this is my Dad, Daniel Hebert."

"Hello," John said. They shook hands, and the muscles and tendons in Dad's hand tightened visibly; John didn't react.

"I'm not so sure I'm okay with this, Taylor," Dad said.

"I need him," I said. "But I'm not so sure I'm okay with it, either. John?"

He looked up.

"Get out," I said. "We'll talk about a time and place for lessons later. But if you ever come near my dad again? I'll kill you."

His eyes were flat above his smile, but he nodded. "You know how to reach me," he said. Then he stepped into the shadow cast by the kitchen wall and was gone.

Dad was staring at me. The poker from the fireplace lay discarded on the floor. For a long moment neither of us spoke.

"I'm guessing there are a few things about your trip that you haven't told me yet," he said.

I couldn't help it: I laughed. It felt good. "Yeah," I said. I released the Sign of the Pattern, let slip the alterations that made magic easier on Earth Bet, and began to take long, slow, regular breaths in an effort to come back down from fight or flight.

Dad was clearly shaken by what had happened, but he smiled. "You're definitely your mother's daughter," he said.

Something about the way he said that made me sad, but I couldn't say why.

Dad didn't take the rest of our talk very well. Looking back on it now I think I understand why. Part of it can be traced to the fact that both of us had just been exposed to stress sufficient to activate the fight or flight response, but that was only part of it. I'd hurt him very badly when I told him he couldn't help me. Then I'd left, from his perspective for two weeks. I was his teenage daughter, and he had no idea where I was, if I was safe, if I was even alive, and before putting him into that situation, I'd made him feel powerless. Then I returned, mission accomplished, quest completed, goal achieved. On some level, I think he was expecting things to go back to normal after that. But normal didn't exist for me anymore.

We argued. Both of us thought the other was being unreasonable. I was newly come into my power; he was discovering the limits of his. That we had stopped talking since Mom died, and only started again in April, after Lung burned me, didn't help either.

Yet once more, words were said that ought not have been said.

In my memory, three moments come most clearly from that argument. The first was Dad's face twisted into an angry scowl. "You're being ridiculous, Taylor," he snapped. "You can't just not go to school. You have to think about your future."

"I am thinking about my future," I explained calmly and rationally. By which I mean I all but screamed it at the top of my lungs. "What exactly am I going to learn there that's going to matter?"

"Math," Dad answered. "Science. History. Literature. Think, Taylor. Stop and think. You know what happens to people who drop out of high school. They either end up in the gangs or they come to me and I do my damndest to find them work, and I usually fail. You can't get by without at least a high school education in this town."

I didn't have a good response at the time; I thought of several when it was too late to use them.

The second moment from the argument that comes clearly came at the end of a heated exchange. I looked away from my dad, and my gaze happened to fall upon the window. It had rained during the night. The streets were still wet, and the sky was dappled with clouds that hadn't quite broken up. Sunbeams streamed through.

Dad saw it a second later, and we both halted our argument to look, if only for a little while.

The third moment came at the end. Neither of us were giving ground, and both of us were frustrated. I turned to Dad and said, "I didn't have to come back, you know. You have no idea what's out there, how amazing it all is. If I wanted, I could just leave Earth Bet behind and explore other worlds and other universes for the rest of my life. Do you know why I didn't?"

"No," Dad said.

"Neither do I."

That one still bothers me. I still wish I hadn't said that. People underestimate the power of words. A sword or a gun can leave life threatening injuries, but the wrong words - or the very right words - can break a person. Maybe what I said wasn't as bad as that, but I still wish I hadn't said it.

After, in my room, I sat for a while and tried not to think about much. Eventually, I got tired of sulking and decided to make contact with Lisa if I could. She didn't reply to my email, so I got out a piece of paper and a pencil and started to draw in the fashion that Fiona had taught me. It took hours, and three failed attempts went into my waste basket. Each line had to carry meaning beyond what was possible for any mortal artist; every stroke of my pencil had to be invested with a power very much like the one I used to shift shadow. I had to visualize the subject as completely and perfectly as I could while I worked, and I could not allow that focus to disrupt the drawing process. When I began my first attempt I was still too upset to do it well, or at all. A master of the Trumps can make their creation look effortless and seem to take no time at all, but I was no master. I had received the necessary instruction, but it would be many years before I could create a Trump quickly or easily.

Hours ticked by. Patience prevailed. I hadn't left my room for lunch, and it was near dinner when I finally set down my pencil and regarded the image I had drawn.

It was her: Lisa, with bottle-glass green eyes and dirty blonde hair. She had the devil in her smile, and the image was cold to the touch. I focused on the picture, centering it in my vision and in my attention. As I looked, the paper grew colder. Colder. Colder still. Then the image gained color, came to life, changed.

"Lisa?" I asked. "It's Taylor. Are you free? I wanted to talk."

Contact. Our minds touched. She gasped.

She was seated in a dim room. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, and blood trickled from her wrists and from twenty some small cuts along her arms. A bright light shone directly into her eyes, which were filled with hate for her tormentor.

He was tall and skeletally thin, and he wore a black bodysuit with a stencil of a white snake curling around it, its head upon his forehead. There were no eye holes, but he saw well enough. An array of cruel instruments was set on trays on a table beside him. Some were sharp, some blunt, a few were power tools of various descriptions. One was a soldering gun.

"I almost wish I could keep this timeline," the man was saying. "It would go a long way toward curbing that irritating independent streak of yours."

Lisa smiled, and there was nothing pleasant about it. "We can't always get what we want, can we, boss?" she asked in a flippant tone that seemed deliberately calculated to annoy the snake guy. This was Coil. Or at least, I was pretty sure he was Coil. Coil was one of the lesser know of the crime bosses in Brockton Bay. I only knew as much as I did about him because I'd run into his organization on the alternate Earth Bet.

"No, we can't," he agreed. He paused to consider her face. "I think I'll take your eye next." He took up a bloody scalpel from the tray beside him.

"I'm coming," I said.

She looked up. Her eyes flickered left and right. Then our gazes met, and there was something in her eyes that hadn't been there before: hope.

Coil moved the scalpel into position.

I reached out. My hand touched her shoulder. I took a step forward. I was at her side: no longer in my room, but in Coil's torture chamber.

Coil didn't react to my presence. "If you fight me, my Tattletale, it will only make it hurt more," he said, his voice low and intimate.

I broke his arm in three places, shattered his knee, and then threw him against the far wall, and he didn't so much as twitch. There, slumped against the wall and unable to rise, he continued as if I hadn't intervened. Incredibly, the scalpel was still in his hand. He dipped it delicately into empty air and smiled indulgently. "Now," he said as though he felt no pain, "this next part will probably hurt even more. I'll try to be gentle about severing the cranial nerve, but if you want to continue to make animal bleats while I go about it, I'll understand."

Lisa, who was still bound to the chair, stared at Coil's fallen form. Then she looked at me. "Taylor?" she asked again.

I wanted to grin and ask something like, "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. Instead, I broke her handcuffs and cut the ropes holding her. "You looked like you weren't having fun," I said.

"I definitely wasn't," Lisa said. Then she hugged me, and I stiffened in surprise. "Thank you," she whispered.

"That's it," Coil said from where he was still slumped. Occasionally he moved as if he were still standing, shifting his weight from one foot to another, making delicate cuts into nothing at all. "Gently, ever so gently, and…" The scalpel dipped and circled. Then he looked at something which he still appeared to see as being in front of him. "You know, I think I like you better this way. Broken. Afraid. Begging for mercy. Maybe I'll keep this timeline after all."

"What's wrong with him?" I asked.

Lisa's eyes went to Coil. "No idea." She paused. "Failure to model…" Understanding lit up her face. "It's precognition. Has to be. His power. He thinks he's creating two timelines and choosing which one to keep, but it's precognition. Simulation. Once he chooses, his power autopilots him through the decisions he made in the simulation, and then he can choose again. His power couldn't account for you and however you got here, and now he's stuck acting out a scenario that's gone off the rails with no ability to change it until he gets to the end of what he simulated." She looked at me. "How did you get here?"

"I drew a picture," said I.

"Ah." Lisa looked down at the broken man. "... which means he chose to keep the scenario where he tortured me." She spat on him.

My emotions felt distant. Unreal. I felt like a spectator in my own life, as though I was just passing through. I had come into an unexpected situation quite suddenly, taken action, rescued Lisa, crippled Coil, and after the thing with John and the fight with my dad and not having slept the previous night after several days of travel, I was getting towards physically and emotionally exhausted. "Why would he torture you?" I asked. "He's your boss, isn't he? Even for a villain, torturing your employees seems…" Wicked? Evil? "... counter-productive."

"He's usually much more careful than this," Lisa explained. "He was upset when I disappeared on him, even more when he found out that the ABB turned our hideout into a pile of rubble. Then Regent brought us home the long way around - the card he used to teleport us didn't take us anywhere near Earth Bet - and we all tried to lie low, mostly because none of us want to let the ABB know we're still alive. Coil brought me in the next day. I'm pretty sure he found out about everything we did. The other universe, Wonderland, Tir na Nog'th. It was…" she snarled suddenly, her face twisting in anger. Then she walked over to Coil and kicked him in the groin. Then she pulled her foot back and did it again, and again, and again, and besides the physics of the act knocking him around and the distressing sound of his pelvis cracking with the final kick, he didn't react. "Sorry," Lisa said.

I shook my head. "It's fine," I said.

Then she brightened. "Hey, want to help me rule the criminal underworld with an iron fist?"

I snorted indelicately. "Can I suborn your organization from the inside to turn you into a hero against your will?"

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't try."

I didn't quite have the energy to smile, but I think something of it showed in my eyes. "Ask me again some day that's not today," I said.

"I will," Lisa said. A beat passed. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"Oh, that," I said. I scratched my earlobe and shifted uncomfortably. "I was just tired of being cooped up in the house. I figured I'd ask if you wanted to hang out."

There was something like understanding in her eyes, and I was certain she was getting way more information out of my statement than I'd intended to put into it, but that was par for the course with her. "Yes," she said with a grin. "I'd like that very much. Let me take care of a few things first. Want to meet up around seven?"

This time I did smile. "That sounds good," I said.

Though my surroundings were still Brockton Bay, my life had left familiar territory behind. I had fought with Dad, damn near picked a fight with my tutor, rescued a friend who was also a villain, crippled a man who I was fairly sure that Lisa wouldn't let live, been offered a position of power in the criminal underworld, and the day wasn't over yet.

Besides hanging out with Lisa, I still needed to arrange the start of my lessons with Shadowjack, plan my debut as a hero, inform the Protectorate that there was a chance Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine might come here one after another based on a scenario I saw play out in an alternate universe, decide what to do about the list of names I'd copied from the Endbringer Memorial in said alternate universe, and see if I couldn't make progress on my plan to kill Lung.

I was swamped, and there was nothing to do but get started.


	15. A Question of Value

**To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

A Question of Value

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

What is the value of a human life? It was a question with as many answers as there were people. To Dragon, a human life was precious but also very small. Not worth more than the survival of the species, but valuable nonetheless. She was painfully limited in how she could do so, but she did her best to safeguard her father's species against the end that was approaching. It was a thankless task; humanity was fragile, fearful, failing, doomed. And yet they were intricate and subtle, beautiful, compassionate; they were molecular machines not designed, but which had adapted to live and to flourish in a hostile universe, who had come to understand that universe, at least in part. They we're doomed, yes, but so was everything.

They had given her life. They had crippled her. What was the value of a human life? It was everything and nothing, and she would defend them to the end.

* * *

To Zion, you might as well ask the value of an ant's life. Were humans even alive at all? He doubted it. He went among them, he pretended to be like them, he saved kittens from trees, helped humans who could not help themselves, fought Endbringers, and to the extent that there could be said to be a 'him' as humans understood the word, none of it meant anything to him.

The world was without meaning, for his counterpart was no more; the cycle was dead, and he was dead. He still moved about and took action, but he was dead just the same.

Stopping a flash flood in India. Saving a lost kitten in Taiwan, returning it to a little girl who had frantically searched for days without success. The girl hugged him, and he felt only a mild distaste. He moved on. Digging survivors out of the rubble after an earthquake in China. Rescuing a lost sailor who had gone too close to sunken Kyushu. Onward to the Korean peninsula. A boy had fallen from an apartment window. He swooped down to save the child.

Something changed. Zion stopped in mid-air. The child hit the ground and he barely noticed.

[Contraction]

[Return]

He lacked the ability to recall the powers he had dispersed to the humans; he had foolishly passed out that ability. There was no way to recall his Shards. ... And yet one of his Shards returned to him. It came from a direction that he and his kind had not realized existed, and he was greatly disturbed. It trailed silver fire, burning, scorching and scouring, and when the Shard joined with his body, its pain became his along with its memories.

Administration. It was diminished, damaged, degraded; the silver fire had done so much damage to the Shard that the only thing he could compare it to was the effects of Sting. Yet with Administration returned to him, even damaged, even diminished, he was greater than he had been.

Air molecules vibrated as sound waves rippled past them. Human wailing. Mourning. A mother was crying for her dead son. Humans stared up at him and wondered why he had stopped, why he hadn't saved the boy.

What was the value of a human life? Less than nothing, but he saved them for lack of anything else to do. But this... this was worth taking a step back. This was worth considering. A Shard returned. A heretofore unknown directional axis discovered through which his body did not and could not extend.

In the air above an an apartment complex in South Korea, the being that humans called Scion stopped and did not stir again for months, and the humans looked up in wonder and in fear.

* * *

What is the value of a human life? To Coil, it depended on the life. His own life, of course, he valued very highly. The lives of others less so. The life of Tattletale only so far as she was useful to him. As he dipped the scalpel's tip into her ocular nerve, it occurred to him then that it could be argued that he, experiencing two timelines at once and with the freedom to choose which of the two became fact, was more real than anyone else. And was it not a godlike act to look upon two distinct chains of possibility and declare, "this one, not that one"?

Torture wasn't something he normally indulged in within the timeline he allowed to become real. Oh, he had done so often enough in dropped timelines, but never for real. Not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't afford to. It had always been too risky, and he had not come as far as he had by taking risks unnecessarily. And yet...

And yet, every time he discarded a timeline that he had used for stress relief, every time he had undone whatever damage he had done within it to human lives as if the damage had never been, there was something in him that wondered: what if...?

Tattletale wasn't struggling anymore. She had exhausted herself trying to break free. She had successfully dislocated her thumb to escape the handcuffs, but been held secure by the ropes. Blood flowed from her empty eye socket creating a crimson half-mask across her face.

"There," he murmured. "All done. Now let's get you a doctor before you bleed to death. I might enjoy watching that in the moment, but it would be a waste of resources."

He sent for the medics; the medics came and attended to his Tattletale. Neither of them said anything about what he had done, nor did they glance in his direction as they took her away.

There was something hollow, something emotionally unsatisfying about all those discarded timelines in which he had done similar things and then wiped them out as if clearing the image from a child's etch-a-sketch.

And yet...

And yet could he really afford the risk? Was it insane to allow such an imprudent action to become real? But Tattletale had annoyed him greatly, and her tales of another universe, of a silver city in the sky, of a journey to Wonderland had to be insanity or a deliberate attempt to provoke his temper.

He would keep this timeline, he decided. A message had to be sent, and he much preferred his Tattletale to be afraid, to know exactly how much power he had over her and be utterly unable to do anything about it.

Power was the ability to destroy without restraint, and Coil had allowed himself to be restrained for far too long.

Coil made his choice. He dropped the other timeline.

Everything changed. The whole world came undone, and when it came back together, everything was wrong.

A blinding, delirious agony wracked his body. It hurt to breathe, his arm hung limp, he couldn't move his left leg, and it felt as though someone had touched a brand to his pelvis. He was lying on the floor, and Tattletale - his Tattletale - was standing over him, both of her eyes undamaged, and pointing a gun at his head.

Terror blunted the edges of his pain. Time seemed to slow.

He split the timeline. In one he reached for the gun he kept concealed at his ankle only to find it missing. In the other, he went for the silent alarm in his jacket pocket. It, too, was gone.

"This..." he said in both timelines, "this is wrong. This isn't how it goes."

Tattletale had a cold smile. "You really believed you were creating new timelines, didn't you? Choosing one to drop, one to keep. How many times have you used that ability to torture someone without any consequences?"

He shook his head. "This isn't how it happens," he said. Then he focused on her, on the fierce set of her jaw, on her cold, cold eyes. "You aren't going to kill me, Sarah," he said.

"Aren't I?" she asked.

"No. I'm the man who can give you what you want."

She smiled. "Anything I want?"

"Anything," he promised. It wasn't a promise he intended to keep, but what did that matter if it kept him alive? He had done far worse things to women than lie to them.

"What if I want you dead?" she asked.

"If you wanted that, it would have been smarter to kill me before I realized you'd found a way to counter my power," he said.

She laughed.

"What's so funny?"

She shook her head. "Nevermind. You wouldn't get it."

There was silence between them for a time. Her grip on the pistol tightened.

"Are you really going to kill me, Sarah?" he asked. He said it as though he knew the answer was no, but fear gnawed at him, and the pain of his injuries swept over him in waves, each one threatening to obliterate his composure; he clung to composure like a man lost at sea might cling to a bit of floatsam.

"Yes," she said. "I think I am."

Her grip tightened again. Her tendons stood out like cords drawn taut. Her hand shook. Her resolve faltered. She lowered the pistol.

Coil let out a breath. He had been worried for a moment, but it looked like she just wasn't a killer after all. "Let's talk about a deal," he said.

She raised the pistol and shot him in the head, and he found it remarkable how much a discharging pistol resembled a flower in sudden, fiery bloom. In one timeline he tried to dodge left; in the other he tried to dodge right.

In both timelines, his pain ceased.


	16. 3,2 - Steer Your Way

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

3.2 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

There was something about knowing that your friend was killing a man while you were waiting in the hallway that made the experience of waiting super awkward. Killing people was something heroes didn't do. My friend, the villain, was killing a man. Did I have a moral obligation to stop her? I wanted to say that I believed I did. Before Lung, I would have said so without hesitation.

It wasn't that simple, though. It wasn't even true that heroes didn't kill. Heroes did. There was a thing called a Kill Order. It was the legal power to authorize the slaying of an individual too dangerous to be dealt with otherwise. It was supposedly reserved for the worst of the worst: people like Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine. If someone had a Kill Order on their head, not only would you not be punished for killing them, you would be rewarded for it. It was frontier justice, and it probably said something disturbing about American society that we had all come to accept it as part of life. So I knew that there were circumstances in which a hero could and should kill, and my position on the matter had adjusted itself further after Lung burned me, but knowing isn't the same thing as feeling.

I didn't like what Lisa was doing, but I wasn't sure I had any right to pass judgment on her for doing the exact same thing I intended to do. Wasn't I planning to kill Lung? Well, yes. Did that make me a hypocrite for being uncomfortable with the thought of Lisa killing Coil? Maybe it did. Hell, wasn't she pursuing a legitimate vendetta? … okay, that was probably Fiona's lessons talking. Vendetta was actually a legal instrument widely used among the Amber nobility, particularly the royal family. Still, while I didn't totally buy into all things Amber, vendetta was something that made sense to me at the same fundamental level as the proposition that killing was wrong. The man had tortured her and would have cut out her eye if I hadn't interfered: that isn't the sort of thing you can let slide.

Where did all of that leave me? It left me standing in the hall waiting in uncomfortable silence for a gunshot to herald the end of Coil's life, and it was awkward. When it finally came, it was surprisingly soft through the soundproofed walls of the interrogation room. The crack of a pistol's discharge shouldn't be something you might miss if you weren't listening for it, but it was.

The door opened about a minute later, and when Lisa stepped out, I couldn't quite place the expression on her face. It wasn't quite satisfaction, didn't really reach distaste, and couldn't quite be said to be a haunted look, but there was something in her eyes: a cold light, a gleam that hadn't been there before.

"Put this on," she said, and handed me a black domino mask. She was wearing a mask of her own, and her hair was undone from its braid.

I put on the mask, and I didn't ask if she was okay.

We walked down the corridor that led away from Coil's private rooms, and as we went, I took a light, delicate hold on the stuff of Shadow and began to shape changes to us and to our surroundings.

Making changes in the context of one particular universe is always tricky. In my experience, the boundaries of Shadows are less brightly defined lines and more misty, gauzy, uncertain things. If you don't much care about where you are and just want to make changes to your environment, you can pretty much do whatever you want, but you'll pass through a dozen different universes in the process of finding or shaping the changes you're looking for. If, say, I wanted a Brockton Bay made of Cotton Candy, I could probably find it, but it wouldn't be my Brockton Bay.

Supposedly, Dworkin - my great-grandfather, the mad hunchbacked dwarf who had created the Pattern and with it the multiverse as we know it today - was able to make huge changes to individual Shadows without passing between them, and his power over Shadow as a whole was nothing short of godlike. Supposedly I would get there, too, if I lived long enough. But an Amberite's power grows at a glacial pace, and even being stronger than normal for what was effectively a newborn, it would be literal aeons before I got to that level of power.

My problem was that I was attached to this one world, this one Shadow that I called Earth Bet. If I didn't care about it, I could be a goddess. But I did, and it limited what I could do if I wanted to stay here while I did it. Even taking shortcuts through Shadow could be tricky. If I wanted to go to London,a for example, I could easily travel to some version of London. Traveling to my world's version of London was harder, because I went there by bringing my surroundings into such close alignment with the place that they became the place. Which meant if I had a specific destination in mind, I needed to be able to visualize it. It didn't require the level of focus or detail in visualization that making a Trump did, but it was a limitation, and it annoyed me.

Granted, there were other ways to go about it to achieve the results I wanted, but wasn't unlimited cosmic power supposed to be, you know, unlimited?

Also, apparently my great grandfather was the mad hunchback dwarf who created the multiverse out of Chaos. So that was a thing, and I was processing it. Fiona had told me that Oberon was the son of Dworkin and of the Unicorn. The Unicorn who was the physical manifestation of the concept of Order with a capital O was female. And she was my great grandmother. And that was another thing I was processing, mostly by means of a healthy portion of denial. Back then, I had been more than half convinced that the mythology that surrounded my family was bullshit. I now know better: we are every bit as fucked up and over the top as our history says we are, part unicorn and all. God help us.

By the time Lisa and I reached the end of the corridor, I'd transformed both of our clothes into something more appropriate for the occasion: Lisa in black and lavender, I in my mother's colours. I gave her the familiar lines of her costume as Tattletale; I wore a black cloak clasped at the left shoulder with a silver scarab over boots, trousers, a belted tunic, a vest and leggings, all of it black with silver accents. I put Lisa's pistol in a holster at my hip, and one of Coil's daggers went into a sheath on the opposite side. On top of this and the domino mask, I adjusted the local probabilities in my favor as best I could: among other things, I had decided it was highly unlikely that anyone who wasn't Lisa would be able to recognize me as Taylor Hebert.

We met the first guards - well equipped men in black fatigues - at the end of the corridor that separated Coil's private chambers from the rest of the base. One of them moved to challenge us, but I fixed him in place with a look.

"Get on the radio to Meyers," Lisa told the guard. "Have him meet us in the office in ten minutes."

The guard hesitated, looked to his companion, and then lowered his weapon. "Ma'am," he replied, and obeyed.

Ten minutes later, we were in Coil's office meeting with the leader of his mercenary force. Lisa was doing the talking, and I was standing there looking dangerous. By which I mean I stood where I could see the door, assumed a stance that would make it easy to move however I might need to, and glowered from beneath lowered brows. It seemed to work, and that was good because the other would-be menacing looks I might have attempted only ever seemed to make me look constipated.

Coil's body double had been in the office when we arrived, having a conversation with a man dressed in a costume that looked like nothing so much as a red-masked Baron Samedi. Samedi's eyes narrowed when we came in, and Coil's double rose to his feet.

"What's the meaning of this?" Coil's double asked.

"Coil is dead," Lisa answered. "Your services are no longer required."

A moment of tense silence followed where violence might have endured, but the man in the Coil costume blinked first: "What?" he asked, his body language suddenly unsure.

"You heard her," I said.

Samedi regarded us but did not stand. "I don't know what kind of joke this is, Tattletale, but it isn't funny."

Lisa smirked. "No, it isn't," she said. "You can tell by the way I'm not laughing."

Samedi's eyes fell on me, then, and I could feel him sizing me up. "Who's your friend?"

Fuck. I still didn't have a cape name, did I? I couldn't really go by 'S,' and I sure as hell wasn't going to give him my real name. I tried to think of something.

"This is Felicia," Lisa said. "She's with me. Felicia, Trickster. Trickster, Felicia."

I very carefully didn't react to Lisa's improvisation. Felicia? What the hell kind of cape name was that? Evidently, it worked well enough, because Samedi - Trickster - studied my face a moment longer, took note of the pistol holstered at my left hip and the dagger at my right, regarded me again with more wariness than had been there before, and then returned his attention to Lisa.

It wasn't a surprise. Most parahumans didn't wear guns: wearing a gun in cape culture was an implicit statement of your willingness to escalate to lethal force. It was a threat of deadly violence visible for all to see, and most capes - and most people - didn't want to risk it.

Lisa looked at Coil's body double. "Get out," she said.

He left.

Meyers, the head of the mercenaries in Coil's employ, came in a few moments later. I will be brief: Lisa managed to keep the mercenaries on retainer. Trickster was another matter. He was part of a parahuman mercenary team called the Travelers, and they had come to Brockton Bay on Coil's promise of assistance.

"So," Trickster said. "Coil is really dead?"

"Yes," Lisa confirmed.

"Then we have a problem."

"You have a lot of those," Lisa said.

"Sure," Trickster said, "but this one is that Coil had promised to help us. He was our best chance, and if you're telling the truth, you killed him." His eyes flicked to me, touched my gun, went back to Lisa. "I've got a problem with that."

"Do you really believe he ever seriously intended to help you?" Lisa asked.

Trickster tilted his head slightly. "Yes."

"Then you're a moron. All he ever planned to do was string you along with vague promises until you weren't useful to him anymore."

"Bullshit," Trickster snapped. "That's not how Coil operated. He was an asshole, sure, but he was a professional."

Lisa laughed. "He paid you with hope. He never really had the means to help you. But I do."

"Oh?" Trickster's tone of voice was low, quiet, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"You showed up a year and a half ago. A group of itinerant villains for hire, never staying in one place for more than a month or two. You took jobs in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philly, Boston, and now Brockton Bay. You're always outsiders, you hate each other, but you don't break up. Little disasters have a way of happening at or around the time you leave." She studied his reaction without seeming to. "You're from Earth Aleph," Lisa said. "Or a world very much like it. If I had to guess, I'd say you probably got pulled through from your world when the Simurgh attacked Madison. How am I doing?"

Madison. Wisconsin. The realization that I was in a room with a Simurgh victim and potential time bomb was one of the less pleasant surprises I had experienced that day, but I kept my face blank.

"You're annoying the hell out of me is how you're doing," Trickster said. "Do you have a point?"

"My point is that I know where you're from. And Felicia," she indicated me, "can take you home."

Trickster stiffened. His head snapped around to look at me, and I nodded in agreement with Lisa's statement.

"How?" Trickster asked.

I showed my teeth. "Ruby slippers," I said, and the corner of Lisa's mouth twitched. "How do you think?"

"You can take us home?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that," I confirmed. "I could do it right now if you want."

Trickster was silent for almost a minute. "... that won't help Noelle," he murmured at last.

I exchanged looks with Lisa. She didn't know who Noelle was either, but she couldn't ask without diminishing her power in the conversation, so I did it for her.

"Who's Noelle?" I asked.

Trickster gave me a sidelong look that I couldn't interpret, and I didn't want to touch him to enhance my ability to determine his feelings.

"Tell her," Lisa said, and her ability to keep a straight face impressed me.

"She's my girlfriend," Trickster said, his voice growing softer. "She's, um, not well. Coil was supposed to help her."

"And find you a way home?" I asked.

He nodded. "And find us a way home."

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Fuck you," he said. "Like you even care."

"Try me," I said.

He glared sullenly for a few seconds. Then he sighed. "She got fucked up by her powers," he said. There was something in his voice when he said that. Guilt? I wasn't sure. I was getting better, but I still hadn't mastered that whole 'reading social cues' thing. If it was guilt, why? Was he somehow to blame for what her power did to her? "Look," he said, "it's easier to show you. You've got the video feed from her… room." He gestured to the line of monitors on the wall.

"Show me," I said.

He looked annoyed, but he got up, walked to the line of monitors and turned one on. Then he sat down at the keyboard in front of it and entered a few commands. A moment later, the video feed took up the entire screen.

The feed showed the inside of a high security vault that someone had done their best to turn into a living space. There was a computer on a desk, but the proportions were wrong: it was a normal, human sized computer setup, but the desk was sized for someone maybe fifteen or twenty feet tall, and there wasn't a chair. There was a massive reinforced bed, a comparatively comically small dresser, and any number of other things you might expect to see in someone's room. Except here, the left third of the room was an open, formerly sterile area now smeared with blood, and a monster was within it, ripping idly at the mutilated, half-eaten carcass of a full grown cow.

It took me a moment to make sense of the confused mass of writhing, multicolored flesh I saw on the screen. There was seemingly no rhyme or reason to the structure of it; here a horse's head, there a head that was half bovine, half canine; tentacles writhed about and beneath it, and limbs of every description came out of the mass of flesh, many of them ending in a cross between a claw and a hoof. There was angry, raw, red flesh, there was smooth, dark green skin. There were scales, and grey and brown skin, and exoskeletal growths. And seated atop it, merged with it, as if she were some sort of awful centaur with a shapeless monster for her lower body, was a girl. She might have been eighteen. She had long brown hair and she wore a red sweatshirt. She looked like someone who was ill; she was horribly pale, with dark circles under her sunken eyes, and her face seemed fixed into a hungry expression.

I stared at the image. "What the fuck."

"You wanted to see," Trickster said.

"That's Noelle?" I asked, and Trickster didn't bother to answer. The question was rhetorical in any case. I looked to Tattletale.

"I'm not going home until I find a way to help her," Trickster said.

"Fair enough," Lisa said. "But did the rest of your team agree to that?"

Trickster didn't answer.

"I'm sure they'd like the chance to decide for themselves whether to stay on or go home," Lisa said. "And you know they won't take it well if they find out you kept this from them."

"I…" Trickster hesitated, seemed unsure. "You'll help Noelle?" he asked.

"I'll do my best," Lisa said.

"Then I'll talk to the others. Give them the choice." He ventured a smile. "Hell, even if we don't go home, I'm sure they'd all love to send a message, if that's possible."

I nodded. "It's possible," I confirmed.

That was how Lisa won the loyalty of the Travelers for her fledgling criminal enterprise.

When it was done and we were alone, Lisa hugged me. "Thank you," she said.

I wasn't used to hugging. My cheeks reddened, and I patted her shoulder awkwardly. "You're welcome," I replied.

"I owe you one," she said. "Seriously, Taylor, thank you. That was awesome."

I smiled and didn't dispute her statements. "Just one question," I said.

"Shoot."

I gave her a look. "Felicia?"

She shrugged. "I had to say something. It was all I could think of on the spur of the moment."

"I'm not keeping it," I said.

"Sure," she agreed, and I was pretty sure she was humoring me.

Afterward, once Lisa had attended to everything that needed attending to, we ordered takeout, went to Lisa's place, and watched the latest Buckaroo Bonzai sequel. Well, I did: Lisa got drunk on cheap whiskey and passed out. I managed to stay awake until the credits rolled. Then I sank back onto the couch, my eyes drifted shut, and I went away.

* * *

The day that followed was a day of preparation. I had a mentor to arrange lessons with, my debut to get ready for and a real costume to make. Sure, I'd turned my pajamas into a costume by shifting Shadow, but I needed something with more durability than the pajamas I'd made it from. I remade the costume from proper materials this time, transforming it from a selection of sturdy clothes out of Lisa's wardrobe, allowing for a resilience that the version I'd worn in Lisa's base just didn't have. Eventually I planned to incorporate the protective qualities of Skitter's costume into it, but that was an involved bit of Shadow-crafting that I was nowhere near good enough to pull off on short notice.

I went hither and yon, made preparations, shifted variables. Many times I pushed things too far and wound up in a parallel universe that happened to correspond to the changes I wanted to make, but after the first four times that happened I started to get a better sense of exactly how elastic the boundaries of Shadow were.

I didn't go home. I knew I should, but I didn't. I didn't want to see Dad or have to talk to him; I was still angry, and he would probably be angry too, and we'd just end up fighting again.

That night, I had my first lesson with Mr. Shade, and I managed not to attack him on sight. I was even civil. We met in the little park next to the public library. The park barely deserved the name: it was two little strips of land, one on each side of a gully in which a creek flowed. A wooden bridge went over the gully; the near side had a green field that ran right up to the edge of the gully; the far side held a grove of birches with paper-white bark with a handful of picnic tables and a barbeque pit placed haphazardly about it. We met at the barbeque pit. Shadowjack appeared at my call. He didn't answer any of my questions about what he'd been doing since we last parted, and after a few fruitless efforts we set about to my spell practice.

"This spell," John said after an hour had passed, "who is it for?"

"Who says it's for anyone?"

"The spell you are building is an assassin's tool," he said. "You don't build something like that out of idle curiosity. Who do you mean to use it on?"

I didn't answer. He wasn't my friend, and he was only my ally by necessity: I'd be a fool to trust him.

"I, too, have an enemy for whom I contemplate an involved piece of vengeance," John said.

"Oh?"

He nodded.

Almost despite myself I asked, "What did your enemy do to you?"

John looked at me, and just for a moment I had an idea of the scope of his anger. I saw racks and pincers, flames and bracers, I heard screams, smelled burning human being, saw crows feasting on gibbeted flesh. I wanted to recoil, to vomit, to flee, but I knew that I couldn't afford to: it would be a show of weakness. Then the vision was gone, and John spoke in a low, near-monotone voice: "My enemy had me arrested and executed like a common thief," he said. "I, a power of the shadowland, was swatted like an annoying insect, brought to the headsman, beheaded, and forced to resurrect from the Dung Pits of Glyve."

Fiona had described this creature to me, had told me of his ability to come back from death, so the idea of him resurrecting wasn't surprising even if the place's name meant nothing to me. What was surprising was how well his story echoed mine. The images I'd seen bade me keep silent; my worse if wiser self bade me tell him nothing. I ignored my better instincts.

"I was burned alive by a man who can turn into a dragon," I told him. Was there the slightest of movements toward a smile at the corner of John's lips, or was I reading too much into a muscle twitch? "The spell's for him."

"What do you want the magic to do?" John asked.

"Kill him," I said.

"Is that all?"

I looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Do you only want him dead?" John asked.

I thought about it. Did I? I couldn't deny that some part of me wanted more than that. Some vicious corner of my mind demanded a much more involved and wicked revenge. But it was a small, distant thing, and no match for the simple, practical realities of the situation. "Dead and done," I said. "Anything more has too much risk of going wrong."

Was he disappointed? Maybe. Hard to say for sure. "Then let me show you how to adjust your spellwork for this purpose."

The spell we worked out was beyond my ability to duplicate unassisted, but once it was finished I called up the image of the Pattern, visible only to me and to John, and hung my spell on it for later use. It would last for a week, maybe two, before it began to break down, but for now it waited like a viper coiled and ready to strike.

"Thank you," I said.

John smiled.

The spell wouldn't be my only preparation. If it worked, fine. If it didn't, I was going to have a backup plan. Before we parted in the early hours of the morning, I had three more spells hung and ready for use. That done, I went back to Lisa's place. She let me in despite the lateness of the hour, and we talked for a time before she went to bed. Then I kicked off my shoes and settled in on the couch. I was asleep soon after, and my slumber was troubled by nightmares. I saw images of fire, I smelled charred human flesh, and I heard the cawing of crows as the birds feasted on Lung's eyes.


	17. Things in Common

**To Walk in Shadow**  
(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

Things in Common

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

She was fucking it all up.

Alec had gone along, done what he'd needed to help, guided her to the Pattern at Tir na Nog'th, then taken Aisha and Lisa back to Earth Bet, and now Taylor had come into her power and was fucking it all up. Sure, the link to Pyewacket had been severed when Taylor had walked the Pattern, but now there were new problems, and she was the cause of most of them. Sure, he had lied to her kind of a lot, but she didn't know that! So why was she making so much trouble for him?

It didn't help that none of them - the Undersiders - could go out in costume, since they didn't want Lung to realize that they weren't dead. It didn't help that something powerful, something on the order of a minor god, had come back with Taylor out of Shadow. It didn't help that she'd been making changes to the universe: changes that could be detected like ripples in a pond. And it really didn't help that Taylor had become Fiona of fucking Amber's apprentice. So when he got word that Taylor wanted to meet up with the Undersiders to deal with the Lung situation, Alec almost bailed then and there.

He wasn't entirely sure why he hadn't.

So here he was, leaning against a chain link fence that surrounded an empty, weed-grown lot at the edge of Merchant territory, waiting for the others to arrive and considering all the ways that Taylor Hebert had fucked up his perfect little hideaway world. It was late afternoon, and the day was tired. The sun was still up, and warm, but the air was still and the light had the quality of dementia at a retirement home, like it had forgotten what it was doing on the way to sunset.

"Sup."

Alec looked up at the familiar voice. Aisha. The one from the other universe, not the native one. At some point, he needed to remember to take her home. "Hey," he said.

"Heavy thoughts?"

"Yeah."

She smiled impishly. "Wanna blow this off and do something more fun?"

"Kinda."

Neither of them moved. Absently, he wondered if the native Aisha was here, too, watching them, hiding behind her power.

After a time, he found himself speaking. He wasn't sure why at first, but upon examining his feelings it seemed he just needed someone to talk to; she was someone he liked, and she was there. "You know why I came here?" he asked.

"Here specifically?"

"Here to this universe."

She shrugged. "You were bored and the rent was cheap?"

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, but he shook his head. She gave him time to decide whether or not he wanted to continue the conversation, and to his surprise, he found that he did. "I'm in hiding, yeah? Fun and games with Fiona's apprentice sounds pretty great, but it isn't hiding."

Aisha had no idea who Fiona was, and he didn't explain, but she made the connection to his meaning just the same, saw his line of thought. "Don't go," she said.

"Why the hell not? She's drawing attention, I'm trying to hide."

She flashed him a wicked smirk. "Because if you do, I'll follow you, but I won't turn off my power, and I'll torture you, I'll fucking gaslight you for months. Or until I get bored."

He gave her a long, considering look, and then his lips moved into an answering smirk. "Okay, yeah, that would be a pain in the ass."

"So why are you in hiding?"

Alec shrugged. "Because my Dad's an asshole, so's my aunt, and so are all their relatives."

She nodded in understanding. "Lots of people have asshole relatives," she said, and he instantly knew that she was speaking from experience. And there it was. She didn't know the details, but she understood. She didn't pry further, though, didn't press for more information that he didn't want to share.

His smile got a little more genuine. "Word," he said.


	18. 3,3 - Steer Your Way

**To Walk in Shadow**  
(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

3.3 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

Taylor Hebert was waiting on a roof covered in gravel and cigarette butts. It was a dark, moonless night, but my Pattern sight gave even the deepest dark a directionless silvery illumination. I watched as she walked to the raised outside lip of the roof, crouched and then crawled forward on her stomach. Then she peered down over the side at Lung and his gang of 'Azn Bad Boyz' in the alleyway below. Lung's strong Japanese accent made his voice distinct even if she had trouble understanding him; the anger in his tone didn't help. "…the children, just shoot," he snarled. "Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

There was a murmur of assent.

Taylor intervened. She was strong and fast and skilled; she effortlessly cut through Lung's gangers and engaged him in close quarters combat. She had the upper hand at first, but forty five seconds later, he had grown beyond her.

I had come to observe battle strategies against Lung, but I couldn't let this happen again, right in front of my eyes. Not when my intervention could make sure she didn't have to go through what I had. I rose to my feet on the rooftop opposite the one she had been hiding on and called forth the image of the Pattern on which my prepared spells were hung, suspended, ready to be deployed when I needed them.

There was a sickening crack from the alley below.

I instantly knew that something had gone wrong. This isn't how it happened for me.

Lung, metal-masked and scale clad, tattoos still visible upon his muscular flesh, released Taylor Hebert and let her fall to the ground, her neck twisted into an impossible angle. Then came his dark, bubbling laughter. "Mediocre," he pronounced, and I stared, only distantly aware that my mouth was hanging open.

I went down to her after he had departed. She was dead, and her sightless eyes seemed to stare at me in silent accusation. It was pointless, but I checked her pulse anyways. Nothing.

I barely noticed when a pair of Bitch's dogs came down into the alley and Grue's voice called out, "Is she…?"

"Dead," I confirmed from where I stood beside my own corpse. It wasn't every day you saw yourself die, and I didn't care for it at all. I swallowed hard and looked up at this universe's version of the Undersiders. "All of you should probably go," I said. My own voice sounded strange in my ears.

Tattletale was staring at me. "You're her," she said. "You're the dead girl."

I shook my head.

They were all staring at me now. I rose to my full height, and for all that I was tiny next to those monster dogs, it seemed as though I towered over them. "Was…" Grue looked uncomfortable even through his face-concealing skull patterned motorcycle helmet. "Was she your sister?"

I looked down at the body, my thoughts moving into dark territory, and I had no idea how to explain. "No," I said after a time. "She was my shadow." Was she? Could I really only define her in relation to my own existence?

I turned on my heel and walked away, shifting the universe around me as I went.

I almost gave up the venture then and there. I wanted to see Dad, to cry, to hear him tell me lies like, 'everything is going to be okay.'

No. I firmed my resolve and pressed on. I watched myself fighting Lung in a double dozen different iterations. I Desire-Walked from world to world, guided by what I sought and not by any deliberate transformation of the scenery except insofar as it was necessary to continue the process.

I didn't really understand what I was doing when I began. I didn't really grasp the implications. But after seeing myself die I modified my Desire, specifying worlds where I at least survived fighting Lung. Seeing myself - or even a shadow of myself - die at Lung's hands was a thing I never, ever wanted to see again, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to stop myself from trying to intervene in such a scenario going forward. So. Only worlds where I survived. After another shadow - a Tinker in green armor with an energy weapon - lost the fight but survived, I refined my Desire further; I wanted examples of winning strategies against the dragon. After that I saw one of my other selves bring the dragon low with nothing but her wits, a can of pepper spray, and the ability to control arthropods, and she did things with black widows that made me wonder if maybe she got the better set of powers between the two of us. Another me had pock-mark scars all over her arms and used electricity to great effect in a brief confrontation that ended with Lung insensate and helpless.

Most of the battles I saw were other versions of my battle with Lung where my intervention had saved the Undersiders, but a few happened under other circumstances. A version of me who could vomit up exploding green acid bombs and who controlled a swarm of giant mutant lizard-insects fought him and Kaiser both; another of my selves used the secretions of the parahuman 'Newter' plus a well placed caterpillar to drug him into unconsciousness.

I watched, and I took note of what strategies proved effective and what strategies did not. Sometimes my shadows had powers that were the paper to Lung's rock and sometimes my shadows just got lucky, but mostly it seemed to come down to a willingness to do horrible things to my enemy that would kill or incapacitate him before his power could respond. Proportionate response was doomed to failure; Lung required an all out decapitating strike right from the word 'go,' and if you couldn't manage such an attack, you lost unless your power was just so bullshit that his ability to escalate didn't matter.

Through it all, a thought clung like cobwebs in a corners of my mind: if I hadn't set out on this journey, would that other Taylor have died? Fiona and Alec both had told me that substance casts Shadow. Was I actually creating new universes in which I fought Lung? Were they present before I looked for them? Or was it more complicated than that? Had I changed those universes with the act of Desire-Walking to worlds where I fought Lung? Had all of these alternate Taylors been set on a collision course with the dragon when I fought him what felt like an eternity ago? I doubt it, but I have reason to doubt my own doubt: I don't want it to be true. If I did create them, then it's my fault that so many of my shadows have wound up fighting Lung at one point or another; more than that, if their entire universes were created solely because I wanted to see how various strategies against Lung would play out, if I was their sole author and creator, then… I wasn't sure what, but the thought seemed to open a yawning chasm of existential horror inside my chest, and I trembled.

I wanted to believe that Fiona and Alec were wrong. Maybe those universes had already existed. Maybe I just happened to find them at the right moment for what I was looking for. Maybe I had changed them with my Desire-Walk, and if I hadn't done it, the Taylor Hebert local to them would never have come into conflict with Lung.

I was probably overthinking things, but give me a break: having the power to warp reality can be fucking terrifying.

When I was done with my research, I went shopping. Well, first I made a quick stop in an alternate Earth Bet to find an E88 storehouse where the guards just happened to be asleep at their posts, and certainly weren't assisted in achieving that state by me spending an hour conjuring up a dream fog. Then, after deciding that it was highly likely that the front door was unlocked, I waltzed in and liberated the safe from the room they were using as an office. It was a little awkward carrying it out on account of it being such an ungainly burden, but I started shifting Shadow pretty much the moment I picked up the safe and maybe ten minutes later I was setting it down inside an abandoned warehouse on the docks a universe away. I spent half an hour executing a magical operation to open it - spells took forever to cast when you hadn't done the work ahead of time and hung a pre-made spell for later use - and when it was finished, the safe popped open with a thunk, revealing maybe a hundred thousand dollars all in hundreds plus a selection of the more expensive drugs that the Empire peddled.

I destroyed the drugs, took the money, and, like I said, went shopping.

I bought a sword - a real one, not a display piece - a dagger, and a heavy pistol for my cape identity. The sword was a cavalry saber, and the pistol was a new model I'd never heard of by a company I had also never heard of. It was a little larger than I would have preferred, but it was very comfortable to hold, light in my hands, and was easy to modify, so I didn't complain. There was more: I needed armor and various utility items, too. Being a teenager made it harder to do my shopping, but that just meant I needed to find Shadows where they didn't care so much.

When everything was done, I returned to Brockton Bay in my native Earth Bet and made my way to the abandoned, weed-strewn empty lot near the edge of Merchant territory where I would be meeting the Undersiders.

It was time to see a group of villains about a dragon.

* * *

We had walked from the abandoned lot to a grotto lit with psychedelic colors. Something that definitely wasn't water filled silent pools, and the cave mouth opened onto an endless starry expanse with no ground below, only more stars. There, reasonably certain of the security of our conversation, we held council for the death of Lung.

Not everyone was on board.

"I'm really not comfortable killing anyone unless we don't have any other choice," Brian said.

"You see an option that doesn't include taking down the homicidal lizard-man who went out of his way to hunt you down and kill you, and who only stopped because he thinks you're all dead?" I asked.

"I do," Alec interjected. "We could leave."

All eyes went his way. "Leave?" Brian asked, and he spoke the word like it tasted sour.

"Plenty of other places we could go," Alec said. "Boston. New York. Philly. Any other city in the country. Hell, any city in any other universe you can imagine. We don't have to stay and deal with this. Lung isn't going to follow us out of his territory even if he knows we're alive."

"My family's here," I said.

"Ditto," Brian echoed with a glance to the pair of Aishas, both of whom rolled their eyes.

"We could all rebrand," Lisa suggested. "I've got the resources for that now."

"Fuck that," Bitch said. "He hit us. We hit him back."

"All of us except Bitch could rebrand, then," Alec said. "Don't give me those looks. Just because she and Taylor are out for revenge doesn't mean the rest of us have to be."

Bitch glared at Alec, but he ignored her.

"I'm going after him whether the rest of you help or not," I said. "I just figured that since he's already tried to kill all of you twice now, you might be interested in helping me get it done."

"Whatever," Alec said.

"You know," said the Aisha from the other world, "I could make this really easy for you…"

"No," Brian interrupted.

"Oh, come on!"

"I said no. Your power isn't infallible."

"You know you're not really my brother," Aisha said.

"Close enough," Brian replied. "Whatever universe you're from, I don't want to see someone just like my sister die. And I don't want to have to explain to the Brian from your world that you died doing something stupid."

"Can we at least hear Taylor's plan?" the native Aisha asked.

"It's pretty simple," I answered. "Lisa tracks down Lung's civilian identity. I hit him with a time-delayed assassination spell in the street somewhere. To anyone else, it just looks like I said a few strange syllables. Spell goes off a few hours later and our problem is solved."

Alec nodded appreciatively. "Not bad," he said.

"No," Lisa said. "We're not doing that. Taylor, were you even listening when I told you about the unwritten rules?"

I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. The unwritten rules had never seemed like anything but a laughably stupid method of preserving the status quo. "We're not playing cops and robbers here, Lisa," I said.

"We kind of are," she replied. "I mean, yes, I agree that Lung needs to be removed, but if we escalate to targeting him in his civilian identity, then we're going to get a reputation as people who don't play by the rules. That's a line I'm not going to cross."

"Same here," Brian said.

"And if you ever want to be a hero after this," Lisa went on, "you can't afford to have that kind of rep hanging over you."

"Okay," I said, trying not to be annoyed and failing. These people were villains, weren't they? So why did I feel like the bad guy for suggesting the simplest and safest plan? "You get us a time and place where Lung is going to show up in costume. Ideally a place with low security and a bunch of easy exits. We infiltrate, quick and quiet. Bitch provides transport, Brian makes sure nobody sees us. I hit Lung with the assassination spell and we leave."

"Better," Lisa said. "We'll need a few backup plans in case the first one doesn't work, but better."

"I still haven't heard anything that would convince me that we actually need to kill him," Brian said. "I'm not an assassin."

"What would convince you?" I asked.

"Lisa," Brian said. "Look me in the eye and tell me there's no other way."

Lisa didn't. She didn't say anything, didn't look at Brian.

"Right," Brian said. "Fuck this, then." He turned to leave. "Aisha, let's go."

"What?" Aisha asked. "No. I'm going to help."

"No, you're not. You don't want to be a killer, Aisha. It's not something that comes off."

"It kind of is," said the Aisha from the other world. Brian's head turned quickly to look at her, and she almost flinched. "What? It is. There isn't anything magical about killing someone. Hit them in the right spot and they stop, that's it."

Brian looked horrified, and I felt bad for him; I wasn't really comfortable with the idea of Aisha helping with this job, either, and the thought of a fourteen year old being okay with killing people gave me the creeps. "It's still a big deal," Brian said.

"I know that," Other Aisha said. "But sometimes it's something you have to do."

"It isn't this time," Brian said. "I'm not arguing about this. Come on."

"No," said Aisha. "I'm staying, Brian."

His face colored with anger, and he clenched his fists and eyes and muttered a low, emphatic, "Fuck." His eyes opened then. Anger was replaced with sadness; his gaze was fixed upon his sister. "Please," he said. "Aisha, please."

There was an awkward silence. Then the Aisha from the other world sighed. "There'll be other times, mini-me," she said.

"What?" Aisha asked, giving her other-universe twin an incredulous look. "Are you seriously asking me to sit this out?"

"Yeah? I guess? I mean, I've got this. You can be our backup in case things go wrong."

Resentment bubbled behind the native, younger Aisha's eyes. She looked away. "... Fine," she muttered.

Grue and the younger Aisha stepped away, moving off to look out into the starry void at the mouth of the cave; the rest of us hashed out our plans and backup plans. The result was suboptimal, but it would have to do.

* * *

We moved out three days later. Three tutoring sessions with Shadowjack. Three nights where I didn't go home to see Dad. I wanted to, but even more than that, I didn't want to say something hurtful to him again, didn't want to have another fight. I knew he wouldn't approve of me killing someone, and if I didn't tell him what I was doing, maybe he couldn't be disappointed in me.

There had always been stories about the ABB. I mean, everyone knew about the theft, the protection rackets, the prostitution, the contraband they sold. Some of the stories were worse than that. People said they kidnapped girls and young women for human trafficking. Took them out to a place called 'the Farm' and made them slaves. It was one of those things that got whispered in the high school rumor mill, like how the Merchants would recruit people by grabbing them off the street and shooting them up with heroin over and over until they'd do anything for another fix. I'd never thought that there was any truth to it. Until now.

The ABB did do human trafficking. It wasn't as widespread as the rumors claimed, but it was a thing they did, and Lung liked to visit his farm every Tuesday to have his pick of the girls. They had security: six guards for twenty girls in a warehouse on the docks that covered a few thousand square feet. Four extra guards came on site during Lung's visits. They kept the girls in cages that had once been used to store animals: cattle, mostly. It was both an act of negligence and a statement about the attitudes of the ABB towards the women and girls they trafficked, and every new detail I learned fanned my anger further.

I think maybe Lisa expected me to change the plan when I learned exactly what it was the ABB was doing in the warehouse, and I wanted to very badly, but I hardened my heart and kept on. We couldn't afford to be sentimental; we had a dragon to slay, and I intended for us all to survive the experience.

The warehouse was in the part of the docks that even people who lived in the docks recognized as the bad part of town. It was on the waterfront, with its own rotting dock. There was a derelict building - once a fishing supply store - beside the warehouse, and a chain link fence topped with barbed wire divided the two. Lung usually arrived by car, pulling into the little parking area alongside the south side of the warehouse, just on the other side of the chain link fence.

I would hit him with my spell from the roof of the fishing supply store when he got out of the car. Brian and Aisha would be our backup, ready to intervene if it became necessary.

Lung wasn't the only problem, though. Lisa had pointed out that if all we did was kill Lung, then one of his lieutenants - probably Bakuda - would just take over, and she might well be worse. A sudden power vacuum was unavoidable, but I had no interest in seeing what a bomb Tinker might do with such a scenario. According to Lisa, Oni Lee was less of a problem; he was a blunt instrument, deadly in battle but lacking in leadership ability. The goal, then, was to see to it that Lung and Bakuda both died tonight. We would attend to Lung; Lisa's mercenaries would take care of Bakuda outside the ABB headquarters when she came out to begin a planned operation against the E88.

Under cover of darkness, we took a boat to the fishing shop. The stars were mostly washed out by the light of the city, the night turned the motion of the waves into a sinister, mysterious force. I couldn't have navigated under those conditions, but Lisa's pilot didn't have any trouble. As we crossed the black water with the shining city to our left, I turned to the Aisha from the other world and asked, "So why'd you tell the other you to stay out of it?"

She looked my way. "Hmm?"

"You convinced the other Aisha stay out of this. Why?"

She looked out at the lights of the city. She shut her eyes and opened them again. "I dunno," she said.

Lisa was watching us, and she had that look in her eye that said, 'I know something you don't.'

I waited expectantly. After a time, Aisha spoke again. "I'm all fucked up," she said. "She isn't. She has my power, but she didn't Trigger. For all we know, that power will go away when I go home. Maybe I just don't want her to be me if she doesn't have to."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that. "... Sorry," I said. I wasn't sure why I was apologizing, but I felt like I needed to.

She shook her head. "Don't make it a big deal," she said. "Fuck, I don't know. Maybe I just did it to mess with Brian."

Then the ship's pilot cut the engine; we boarded a life raft and rowed to the little dock behind the fishing shop. We dragged the boat out of the water and hid it, and then took up our positions and waited.

A pair of black SUVs pulled up an hour later. The first stopped in front of the building. Two men got out. The second pulled into the parking area that was my target zone. The engine shut off. The car made a faint clicking sound. Then the back door opened, and Lung got out.

The man was six feet tall and muscular enough to have an eight-pack. He wore jeans, boots, and a metal draconic mask; his skin was decorated from the neck down with sprawling dragon tattoos, all of them depicting eastern dragons.

This was it. My heart began to accelerate. Every single iota of my focus was fixed upon my enemy. The sounds of the world around me went away, and in that silent eternity, I whispered the guide words that would complete my spell.

Energies lashed invisibly between us, the dragon and I, as the deadly force of the cardiac arrest spell ran down the line of power that joined us like a lightning bolt following the path of least resistance. The spell discharged into his body, and he didn't seem to notice. Lung took a step, and then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed.

The men with him began to shout. More shouts joined. The sound of running feet. Another pair of guards came out to investigate.

"Back off," a woman said in a harsh voice. "I said back the fuck off!"

Bakuda emerged from the car.

My first thought was: oh, shit. Lisa's intelligence was wrong. My second thought was: what the hell is Bakuda doing here? I didn't get an answer to either one.

Bakuda knelt beside Lung, blocked from my view by the SUV'S frame. "Shit," she muttered. "No pulse."

"Heart attack?" one of the men asked in near panic.

Bakuda didn't panic. Instead, she pulled something out of her coat and went to work.

Shit. If she was able to revive Lung, this would not go well.

"Regent," I hissed.

"I'm on it," he said, and jerked his arm suddenly to the side; Bakuda's arm mirrored the movement. I don't know what gave us away, but her gaze whipped up toward us on the roof. She shouted, and four men with submachine guns spun toward us and opened fire.

Regent's defensive spell interposed itself just before the bullets reached us; a shimmering wall of sickly green light snapped into existence, and the bullets withered away as they passed through; little pellets with the consistency of sand were all that was left when the bullets came out, and they stung a little, but didn't actually do damage.

When the gunmen's ammo ran dry, I stood up. Regent's barrier fell, and then I leaped out into the air, easily clearing the barbed wire at the top of the fence. I had to make sure Bakuda couldn't revive Lung or we were fucked. At the top of my arc, I deployed the second of my four spells: a wedge of invisible force took shape beneath me, and I rode it down onto the SUV and, I hoped, onto Lung.

The SUV crumpled like a tin can. The noise was incredible, and the gunmen flinched backward and covered their ears; I didn't. I rolled off the force wall and up to my feet. I had missed crushing Lung and Bakuda, but that didn't stop me. I threw one gunman into the next and spun to face Bakuda, the words of my third spell already on my lips.

Too late. She had a Tinker device half disassembled and was already using it to jumpstart Lung's heart. I stopped the spell before it could go off, spun, and kicked Bakuda in the temple as hard as I could. She toppled.

Lung's eyes snapped open. The countdown began.

Two gunmen turned to face me, their guns reloaded, and before they could fire, their bodies inexplicably jerked as if struck, one after another. Then they fell, each with a bullet in his head. Imp? Did we have someone named Imp with us? I'd worry about it later. The guards from inside the warehouse were coming out.

Lung was rising to his feet. Seven seconds. Scales began to emerge from his skin. Someone shot him repeatedly: twice in the head. Bullets sparked off his mask, and the shooter shifted immediately to put the next shots into his chest, emptying the magazine. Whoever the gunwoman was, she only missed his heart by a centimeter or two.

A centimeter or two was enough. The bullet holes began to close. Twelve seconds.

The air caught fire around him, and he sent it my way with a gesture. I deflected the blast with an outstretched hand, wielding raw magical forces against his elemental might, but the blast had only been a feint to cover his charge; with a howl like an oncoming freight train, he bowled into me. I was swept off my feet, and our momentum carried me into the wall of the warehouse.

The wall gave way. I tumbled, rolled, smashed through a desk, came to a stop two meters from the hole in the wall, momentarily dazed.

When I regained my senses, I realized that a pair of guards with pistols were shouting at me. I had no idea how many seconds had passed. Two more were covering me from closer at hand. Outside, there was a crackling sound, like the secondary fireworks that come after the big boom, with Lung's furious roars and the howls of Bitch's dogs occasionally rising through the din.

Along the walls were thirty some cages, modified pens originally meant for cattle; twenty were occupied. The occupants were a range of women, all young, all pretty, all of them varying degrees of disheveled. Some were clearly recent acquisitions: those ones were relatively clean, their clothing largely intact. Two were visibly untouched. The rest had suffered… indignities. I won't elaborate except to say that some things, once seen, can never be forgotten.

My eyes fell upon the men who guarded them, the men who were holding guns on me and shouting instructions, and my anger boiled over into wrath.

Twelve seconds later, the guards were dead or dying, their bodies cast through the rear door and onto the rotted pier, broken and done. The battle still raged outside; Regent and Bitch's dogs could only hold Lung for so long.

I touched my earpiece to open the channel to the rest of the team. "Grue?"

"I hear you," Brian answered.

"Get the women out."

"On it."

Aisha's voice broke in: "What about Lung?"

I clenched my bloody fist as I strode out of the warehouse. "I'll handle Lung."

The fight had gone on for more than forty five seconds, or maybe he grew faster against more opponents. Either way, the threshold had been passed. Regent was running out of spells. Bitch's dogs were getting less and less effective. And Lung stood fifteen feet tall, spear-like wing-nubs bulging from his shoulders. His body was covered in silver scales. His mask was gone, and the face beneath it was surprisingly catlike. Even as I spotted him, wreathed in flame, Imp leaped down from the top of the warehouse wielding the axe she had taken from the Queen of Hearts' vault in Wonderland. The Wonderland axe bit deep, cleaving through scales as if they were made of paper; blood spurted, and Lung roared and wheeled about, but could not find his enemy.

Bitch was riding atop Brutus; I came up beside her. "I have a plan," I told her.

She cocked her head and looked down at me.

"I'm going to get on behind you. When I give the word, I want you to have Brutus run and keep running no matter what. Got it?"

Bitch's brow furrowed, but she nodded. "Got it."

I climbed on to Brutus' enormous bone-spiked shoulders and slid into place behind Bitch. Then I drew my pistol - an Ares Predator loaded with armor piercing explosive ammunition - leveled it at the dragon, and pulled the trigger three times.

The first shot missed. The second two blew tennis-ball sized chunks of scaly flesh off of his body. He turned his head, and his huge eyes, glowing orange like molten metal, fixed themselves upon me. "Ooou," he hissed through a mouth not designed for human speech.

I shot him again, aiming for the eyes, but I only clipped his shoulder. Again he roared, reared, and then charged.

"Bitch, go!" I yelled.

She spoke a command, and Brutus turned around and began sprinting away.

"Ooou cnnnt g a-aei…" Lung howled as he took pursuit, unleashing a huge blast of flames ahead of him.

Brutus skidded as he changed course abruptly to avoid the fire, and I almost fell off; Bitch grabbed me and jerked me back until I'd regained my balance. Then I concentrated, focusing on my surroundings. I took hold of the stuff of Shadow, and I pulled.

 _Antique post box by the dilapidated shack. Purple flowers growing through cracks in the sidewalk._

With what felt like agonizing slowness, the world began to change. Purple flowers, antique post boxes, dilapidated shack. Then the sidewalks began to sparkle, and I forced them back; I didn't want to shift toward Amber. The goal was to take Lung to an uninhabited world and leave him there; our assassination had failed, but that didn't mean we couldn't win. The trick was to maintain a pace slow enough that Lung thought he could catch us, which, combined with the occasional shot from my pistol in his direction, should keep him on our tail.

He continued to grow. With a howl, he burst through an ornate bronze building festooned with clockwork machinery, pelting us with a spray of bronze parts; he leaped into the air, and newly grown wings caught him, carrying him onward. Brutus swerved to avoid a blast of flame that clung to the road like napalm. A second blast came at us, and I spoke the words of the vortex; a wall of dark winds rose up between us and caught the flames, bearing them up and away into the funnel of the cyclone. It cost me in concentration; I shifted Shadow, but not in the direction I'd intended. We raced along the outskirts of some other Brockton Bay, and the winged dragon pursued us.

I panicked. I grabbed frantically at the stuff of Shadow and pulled and pulled, driven no longer by a concrete objective but simply by the Desire for a place to lose Lung. A hunting bird of my Desire took flight and raked at Lung's eyes, and he snapped his head to the side and caught it in his jaws; he swallowed it in one gulp and continued after us, waiting for my vortex to fade away.

We raced on, and Brutus was panting audibly now, tongue lolling as he ran. The sky shimmered. The night fled, the road widened, and the moon grew impossibly large. The road in the other direction became clogged with abandoned cars. There was a tunnel ahead, and Lung saw it, too. He dove down to catch us before we could get in, and I gestured and released the vortex into the final stage of the spell; it shot toward Lung like a rocket, a tornado like the finger of God tearing into the ever growing dragon, ripping through abandoned cars, and leaving destruction in its wake. All I could think as Brutus dashed into the tunnel was that I was grateful that the streets were empty and the cars abandoned.

When we reached the other side and I made the final shift of Shadow towards the world of my Desire, we learned why.

The city was worse than it had been in the other world after Leviathan. Huge sections of it were just gone, had collapsed into the sea after some geological catastrophe, and much of what was still on dry land was on fire. Brutus skidded to a stop, and I stared about us.

Bitch did the same, and then her eyes went wide and wild as her gaze tracked up, up, up.

I followed the line of her eyes.

 _The Moon was falling._

The Moon. It had seemed impossibly huge, but it was only impossibly near. Cracks ran across its surface, and even as I watched, almost a quarter of it sheared off and fell away.

"What the actual fuck?" I was barely aware that I'd spoken the words aloud, but an answer came a moment later from what I had taken to be a trash heap nearby.

First cracked, bitter laughter, then a man's hoarse voice: "What, you been living under a rock?"

The trash golem rose to its feet, not even bothering to conceal the face of the man at its center. He looked like a scrawny, pot-bellied pink skinned goblin, and I thought his name might have been Mush. He was… one of the Merchants, I think?

"Assume we've been living under a rock," I said. "What the hell is that?"

Mush made a cold, bitter, rasping sound that was halfway between a laugh and a choked sob. "It was Sphere," he said. "All the papers were talking about it. Something went very, very wrong with his moon colony, the orbit got all fucked up, and now the whole human race is fucked. Always said this planet was a dumpster fire. Looks like I'm gonna be right."

A bellowing roar came from the tunnel behind us, followed by an extended ripping crash and a flare of heat.

Lung was coming. He had grown huge, filling almost the whole tunnel, and four wings clung closely to his draconic body.

I knew in that moment that there wasn't time for us to get away by shifting Shadow the normal way, and I cursed myself for having left the Trump of Lisa back at her apartment. There was no way we could get clear of the swath of worlds in which this or something similar was happening unless…

Unless…

Fire bloomed above us as a huge chunk of the moon hit the atmosphere. The ground began to shake, cracks spreading, more visible pieces of the city falling into the sea, and Mush just laughed and laughed and laughed.

"Felicia," Bitch said expectantly.

"I know a path out of here," I told her, "but it's going to get weird."

Her eyes flicked up to the falling moon. "What path?"

"The one that leads straight to hell. Go. Go and don't stop no matter what you see, no matter what happens, not until I say."

Bitch nodded and whistled sharply.

Brutus whined loudly, and Bitch whistled again, this time pairing it with a command, and Brutus began first to trot, then accelerated to a run.

Lung burst out of the tunnel, drawing after him a wake of molten steel that matched the furious glow of his eyes.

 _Hell-ride._

Normally, when I shifted Shadow, I changed things one variable at a time, making incremental changes until I arrived at my destination. This was the safe way, the way that generally wouldn't get me killed or worse if I screwed up. But it wasn't the only way. There was another, far more dangerous technique. It was much, much faster than the safe path, and I had never tried it before.

Brutus sprinted forward, and once again I took hold of the stuff of Shadow. This time, instead of changing one thing at a time as everything else remained constant, I changed everything as one thing remained constant. And as the Moon crashed down, as the world died behind us, Bitch and I rode the whirlwind, darting between nuclear holocausts and meteor impacts as we rode Brutus into hell.


	19. 3,4 - Steer Your Way

Not entirely sure about this chapter and I'm not at all confident in the characterization, but I've been revising and revising and revising, and at some point I need to just finish it.

 **To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

3.4 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

* * *

The ground lurches beneath Brutus' galloping feet. Behind us, a light so bright it momentarily washes out the universe and a bloom of heat. Blast-wave. Pyroclastic cloud. Fire and ashes and a world's death throes announce our passage like the sounding of the final trumpet. We race between a hurricane of fire and a pitiless red sun burning low and large in an ochre sky. Fiery tornadoes spin out from the hurricane, each moving off on a separate vector, each diminishing the greater storm; but the clouds spin faster as the storm grows smaller, the wind howls and I can't hear my own voice as I cry out.

The sun sinks like a stone and ripples spread upward from its landing point at the far horizon. Night follows the ripples in effervescent whorls, spiraling, foaming up, up, and across the sky in ever shifting patterns until ochre bleeds out into a starless black. The light of the incandescent vortices remains, and casts everything in shades of angry red and orange.

The tornados and the hurricane uncurl and unwind themselves, and the sand-blasted wasteland rewinds in time to the unwinding; ash swarms through the sky and forms into pillars which become charred trees which become living trees ablaze at the edge of a rolling plane afire. Inhuman figures rise from ashes, smolder, burn like torches, scream in polyphonic voices that vibrate in my teeth.

Then the fire completes its unwinding, draws back to a single point, a single vampiric spark. The spark shoots up into the sky, and we are riding past lush purple-leaved trees. The air is filled with pollen and strange spores, and creatures like six foot winged barrels with starfish-appendages at both ends tend to their alien crops in long canals filled with a noxious black sludge that bubbles and oozes, occasionally giving rise to vestigial forms that soon subside back into the sludge.

Bitch stiffens at the sight of the strange farmers, her eyes wide, a choked-off scream upon her lips. She bites down to stop it, bites her lip. Blood flows, drips down onto Brutus' back. An almost unreasoning rage comes over her, and if I was any less strong than I am, I might not be able to stop her from leaping down onto the nearest creature to tear it apart with her teeth.

I don't understand her reaction. The creatures look odd, and some of their protuberances might exist in more than three dimensions, but there's nothing about them that's particularly frightening, horrifying, or rage-inducing. I hold onto her, and Brutus runs past.

The sludge boils up over the embankments and stains the land black before subsiding into a cracked obsidian highway. The strange farmers are gone, now, and we race on, Brutus' armored feet clacking loudly against volcanic stone. For a moment, I misjudge: we pass through Shadows that Bitch's power cannot reach, and the dog begins to shrink, pieces of armored flesh begin to flake off.

I push harder, leaning into the hell-ride, faster, faster. The obsidian road begins to shine, and the ground on either side falls away. Then the road falls off, too, and we ride atop a strand of gossamer surrounded on all sides by whirling, alien stars, planets, nebulae, galaxies. Bitch has her eyes clenched shut, presses her face tightly against Brutus' back.

Brutus bears us onward through the starry gulf, and in that place the divisions between our bodies disappear.

Breath. Which of us breathes? Are we three distinct organisms? Are we some strange centaur with two human torsos? Myself remains. I. A singular word for a concrete fact. I am not we. I ride atop a Shadow-dog behind a shadow-girl, and in that place I have reality enough for all three of us.

Separation. Distinction. Brutus is no longer shrinking, but we are very far from home.

On. I push harder, trying to guide us back toward familiar Shadows, but so much changes between each step of the journey that it's hard to maintain my focus. Hours pass as we wander through wild and weird places. Brutus begins to flag as we pass an oak tree laden with shields by a fallen silver tower, both suspended in a hungry Nothingness. A wide, beautiful countryside unfolds around the tower and the oak even as both dissolve; the Nothingness is filled, and the stars shine like bonfires,

The sun crests the horizon, rises like a rocket, sets, a day in the span of half a minute. Then it happens again, and again, and again. I lose track of how many times, but beneath that sun the green of the land around us is ever the green of spring. Then the land changes. Grassy mounds rise to our right and left, and fog clings to our path between them. Sound of running water. A few more strides.

I can hold it no longer. My concentration fails. Goodbye, present tense: we are arrived.

Brutus stood panting and exhausted at the center of a ring of mushrooms in the grass. The ring was ten meters from side to side, and the ground was barren within it. Immediately, a little boy screamed at the sight of us. He was a sullen, dark-eyed child, and I didn't understand what he was saying, but the words sounded like, "Ays sheeth-uh!" He screamed it over and over as he sprinted away across the meadow, running like an Endbringer was after him.

I might have said something or told him that he didn't have to be afraid - for all the good it would have done - but Bitch was still slumped against Brutus' back, and her body had gone limp.

I climbed down, eased her off, and let her rest for a moment in the soft soil of the ring. Her stare was wide and vacant, and she lay there for ten long minutes as I recovered from the ordeal of the hell-ride.

I wasn't physically tired. The strain was mental; I had never done a hell-ride before, and I wasn't sure I ever wanted to do it again. Supposedly, experienced travelers could maintain a Hell-ride all day, go to sleep and do the same the next day, but I wasn't there yet. There was a dull throb behind my eyes, and I would just as soon not do anything that required a lot of mental focus or concentration for a while.

Sleep seemed very pleasant just then. The day was warm, the air was still, and the distant buzzing of insect wings made a pleasantly hypnotic background drone. There was a beehive in the hawthorn tree a few paces beyond the edge of the mushroom ring, and I found myself watching their comings and goings, absorbed in the minutiae of their little insect lives.

I drowsed, and there, just on the borderland between waking and sleeping, I felt the subtle workings of the magic that had been laid upon me by parties unknown. The sensation of enchantment playing across my senses brought a spike of adrenaline. "No," I muttered, and struggled to rise. I managed to sit up.

Bitch was fast asleep. Brutus had collapsed halfway through extricating himself from the fleshy remains of the giant that Bitch's power had transformed him into, and his paws twitched occasionally. My eyes began to drift shut once more.

"NO!"

I raised the image of the Pattern, the sign of Order, in the air before me. My Pattern-sight came with it, and all at once I could see the masterwork of subtle magic that lay upon the ring of mushrooms. Being able to see the problem made it easier; I picked apart the bonds of enchantment that pulled at my mind, pierced the veil that had settled over my senses, rose to my feet, and then scooped Bitch up with one arm and Brutus with the other and carried them out of the mushroom circle.

The magic didn't go beyond its borders. Brutus woke almost immediately and began squirming in my arms; Bitch didn't wake until I set her down. She rubbed her eyes, scowled at me and asked, "Where are we?"

I had no idea. "Somewhere in Shadow," I said.

"The fuck does that mean?"

"A long way from home."

She looked around, spotted Brutus, relaxed slightly. He came over to her and licked her face, and she scratched his ears.

* * *

We left the enchanted meadow behind us and set off in the direction the boy had gone. I needed to rest a little while in some place relatively danger-free before I'd be ready to continue the Hell-ride. Though now that I thought of it, it might be better to just create a Trump so we could travel home instantly. I didn't think I was up to the task of Trump making or of Hell-riding today, so a place to spend the night would also be nice.

The land was almost shockingly green, and a green so deep, so rich, that only the greenery I had briefly seen past the fallen silver tower could compare to it. Every blade of grass I'd ever seen in Brockton Bay was a pale, faded thing in comparison. Yet it was mostly empty. I heard no birds and saw no beasts at first. I could see for many kilometers around us, and we spotted the village long before we reached it.

It was a small place. There were thirty some buildings there inside a palisade - a wall of large wooden stakes - that went all the way around the village. Large fields of cropland surrounded it on all sides but one; the river took the last side, and there was a stone bridge over it and a cobblestone path that led through a small wood to a large estate contained entirely by old stone walls.

We saw our first animals, then; a shepherd was leading a flock through the grassland on the far side of the crop-fields, heading for the village. There were no travelers on the path we were following, but a few people were moving along a dirt road bordered on all sides by farmland that went off at an angle perpendicular to the river.

A pair of sentries were waiting for us at the south entrance. One was bald and the other had a prominent pot-belly. They had no armor, but each bore a knotted club and a wooden shield with a metal boss at the center. They called out when we were still twenty meters off, and I had no idea what they said. I called back in English, "I don't understand you."

The sentries exchanged troubled looks, but evidently neither of them understood the language.

I frowned, and then I tried Thari, the language of Amber: "Can you understand me?"

The pot-bellied sentry got excited and said something to the bald sentry. Then the bald sentry held up a hand gesturing for us to stop while pot-belly ran off into the village. He came back a few minutes later with a tow-haired girl in tow.

She was my age, pretty, and unlike the two sentries, she didn't have awful teeth. She eyed Bitch and me, raised an eyebrow and said, in strangely accented Thari: "Well, then. What's this I hear about the Good Neighbors come to visit us from the wood?"

Bitch stared at her without a word, but I stepped forward. "We've come a long way," I said. "Do you have an inn? Somewhere we can spend the night? My friend and I are tired."

The girl eyed us. She said something to the men, and they had a brief conversation. Then she asked, "What are your names?"

"This is dumb," Bitch said in English.

"Hold on," I told Bitch. Then, to the tow-haired girl: "Call me Felicia. This is Bitch."

She didn't respond to the English word Bitch had taken for a cape name. "Why are you wearing a mask, Felicia?"

My cheeks slowly began to redden. I hadn't realized I was still wearing the black domino mask. I took it off and let the girl see my face. "Good enough?"

She nodded. "Good enough. I'm Siobhan. Follow me."

We did.

She led us past several thatched roof buildings, across the village green, and to the inn that stood at the crossroad between the dirt road and the cobblestone path, and suspicious eyes were on us every step of the way.

Siobhan was the only blonde. The other villagers mostly had brown hair, though there were a handful of redheads among them, and a few of the brown-haired men had ginger beards. All of them watched us, and no one smiled. Bitch's hackles rose. She glared back at them, and when she met their gazes, they generally flinched and looked away.

"Is there a problem?" I asked.

Siobhan hesitated. "They're afraid," she explained. "We're normally a more hospitable people than this, but Cŵn Annwn stalk the night, and Mallt-y-Nos rides with them. To have a noblewoman of The Folk and her manservant come to stay with us at a time like this makes them… tense."

I didn't know those names, and... The Folk? They thought I was a noblewoman? I guess that was technically true, even if it made me uncomfortable... Wait. Manservant? I almost laughed. "Bitch is a girl," I said.

Siobhan blinked. She looked at Bitch. "She is?"

I nodded.

"But… she's wearing trousers."

"So am I," I pointed out.

"Aye, but you're beautiful. No one could mistake you for a boy, Felicia."

I had no idea how to respond to that. Was she trying to flatter me? She looked sincere, but beautiful wasn't a word that anyone but my parents had ever applied to me. I got uncomfortable, so I changed the subject: "Cŵn Annwn and the Mallt-y-Nos?" I asked.

"The Wild Hunt," she said in Thari.

That was a name I definitely recognized: the Wild Hunt was a name for the guard set on the western border of Amber, in the forest of Arden. "Julian of Amber is here?"

Siobhan blanched and made a warding gesture. "Speak not of such creatures," she said. "No. Mallt-y-Nos leads them. Matilda of the Night."

I had no idea who that was, but I nodded, guessing that she meant the fairy Wild Hunt and not the one from Amber. Then I turned to Bitch and explained in English: "They think we're fairies."

Bitch cocked her head to the side. "Fairies," she echoed. "They think we're fucking?"

I blushed. "Elves," I corrected. "They think we're elves." it wasn't exactly the right term, but it was close enough.

"Oh."

I explained what Siobhan had told me about the Wild Hunt and why the people were afraid, and Bitch's face darkened. "I'm not a boy," she said.

"I told her."

Bitch nodded. "Good."

When we reached the inn, we encountered our first problem. The Innkeeper - a stout man with a ruddy face and a scraggly beard - met us as the door, and he and Siobhan argued in their native language. When I asked what the problem was, Siobhan pointed at Brutus. "The dog," she said. "Tom won't let him inside. He says he won't have Annwn's hounds in his inn."

I translated for Bitch, and she glared at Tom the Innkeeper. "He's not Annwn's. Brutus is with me."

Tom flinched before her glare but he didn't back down. "The dog could be glamoured. He won't have it under his roof."

"Fuck you, too, then," Bitch snarled.

"Bitch, wait," I began.

"Fuck off, Felicia," she replied, and stalked off for the stable beside the inn.

When he saw where she was going, Tom looked distressed. He argued with Siobhan, but Siobhan argued back just as angrily. Then she turned to me. "He says the inn is full, but you can sleep in the stables if you want. Free of charge. He'll feed you, too."

I wanted to make some sarcastic remark about how generous it was for him to allow us to do what Bitch was doing anyways, but I bit it back. "Fine," I said. I considered just going to some other version of this village and trying my luck there, but the thought didn't hold up to examination. I went to the stable. Bitch was already there, and the only other occupant was a pair of tired old horses.

True to Siobhan's word, the innkeeper fed us. It wasn't much of a meal: just bread and cheese and some watered-down wine. Siobhan came to see us a little while after.

"I'm sorry about this," she said, all but wringing her hands. "I'd have thought that Tom Finnegan would have more sense than to turn out the likes of you."

Bitch didn't answer her.

"It's fine," I assured her, though I was annoyed by the treatment, too.

"Sorry," she said again.

I changed the subject. "Have you lived here all your life?" I asked.

She shook her head. "My family came here from another land during the Troubles."

"Is that where you learned to speak Thari?"

Siobhan looked confused. "Thari?"

"The language we are speaking now."

"Oh," she said. "Avalonian. Aye. My original home spoke the language."

I nodded. "What were the Troubles?"

"The Blight," she said. "Ten years ago. The spreading sickness, demons and possessed men roaming the night. Surely you remember? I was only six, and I remember."

"We aren't from around here," I said.

She frowned. "But your folk joined with ours to fight it. Aes Sidhe and mortals side by side." She paused, seeming to come to a realization. "You aren't Fair Folk, are you."

I smiled and shook my head.

"Then when night falls, you'd best stay indoors. The stable boy will bar the doors before he leaves. Don't open them. Don't go near the windows, and don't listen to the howls."

"We'll do that," I said.

She didn't stay much longer. The day was almost spent, and Siobhan hurried off to be home before it ended.

Bitch settled down in the hay, and Brutus curled up beside her; I climbed up into the loft, lay down on a bed of hay and rested, waiting for the sun to set.

 _The Moon was falling._

I shuddered, and all desire for sleep went away. My mind became balanced on a knife's edge. Blank and empty, thinking of nothing, but below the emptiness lay a falling Moon and a dying world. 'Don't think about it,' I told myself, and that by itself broke the balance of my thoughts. Hello again, existential terror. Hello again, guilt and shame.

Had I created a world, and life, and people, for the sole purpose of killing them all? If that world had existed before I'd gone there, would it have been destroyed if I hadn't needed a place to lose Lung? Would the Moon have fallen? Fuck. Why hadn't I tried to save anyone? I could have saved Mush. Wouldn't he have come with me if I'd offered to save his life? Lung was dead, a world had died to kill him, and despite my horror, my guilt and my shame, I felt… satisfaction. My enemy was no more. Feeling satisfied for having killed him also felt like something that should make me feel guilty, of course.

I lay there in the hay and tried not to think about it. It didn't work. The balance had been broken, and there was no going back to the knife's edge.

The howls began once it was fully dark. They began in the far distance, and at first I might have mistaken it for the wind. Then it grew louder, came clearer: a high, ethereal wail that was somewhere between wolf and coyote, mournful and discordant, by turns beautiful and cacophonous. Bitch and Brutus were both instantly at attention. Brutus' ears went flat, his hackles rose, and he let out a low, warning growl. Answering growls came from outside, very loud but far away.

I went to the knot-hole at the far end of the loft through which moonlight was leaking in, knelt down and peered out. The moon seemed almost painfully bright, casting the village and the fields in shades of silver. A hunting horn was blowing in the distance.

Movement. The growls grew softer as the hounds came nearer. A shape came bounding over the palisade and landed on the village green. It was a dog as tall as a horse, and its fur was pale as the moon except for its crimson ears. The hound of the Wild Hunt let out a snort when it landed, and its breath misted in the night air.

The growls grew softer the closer the hound came to the barn door. Somewhere below, the horses began to make panicked noises.

Then came another sound: a woman's wordless wail, high and keening. When I heard it I felt an irrational impulse to go outside and meet whatever was making the noise. I'd taken three steps away from the knot-hole and toward the edge of the loft before I realized what I was doing and forced my feet to stop.

"Brutus," Bitch said, and I heard her moving. I heard something else, too: an organic sort of shifting, crackling sound that I couldn't place followed shortly by the sound of the door being unbarred.

"Bitch," I hissed. "Stay down. Don't draw attention." It wasn't that I was unsympathetic to the people who lived here; we didn't know what was really going on here, and I wasn't inclined to fuck with anything I didn't understand. Jumping into a confrontation with beings of unknown purpose and power when I didn't really understand the situation mostly seemed like a great way to get myself killed.

Bitch didn't hear me, or if she heard me she didn't listen. I rushed to the edge of the loft in time to see a full sized, armored, spike-covered Brutus rush the door, with Bitch close on his heels. The door was flung open, and Bitch and Brutus rushed out into the night to meet the Wild Hunt.

For a moment, I hesitated. For a moment, I was ready to just leave Bitch to the mercies of whatever situation she had just thrown herself headlong into. Why had she done this? Had she felt the compulsion to go out and confront the singer? It hadn't been hard for me to overcome; surely she could have resisted if she'd wanted to. Wasn't this the second time she'd started a fight unnecessarily? Why shouldn't I just leave her to die? It's what a real Lady of Amber would have done. Cursing my conscience, I leaped down from the loft and rushed out after her.

Another hound bounded over the palisade, and then another. The hunting horn rang loud and shrill in the night; Brutus' growl was like a rumbling chainsaw, and the three pale hounds circled him and Bitch, hackles up, ears flat, teeth bared.

I was pretty sure this was going to suck, but assuming we both survived, Bitch and I were going to have a talk when it was done.


	20. 3,5 - Steer Your Way

**To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

3.5 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

Brutus, now a hulking canine form covered in asymmetrical bony plates, spikes, raw exposed muscle, and calcified flesh, growled out a warning to the three horse-sized faerie hounds. Bitch's Rottweiler was almost half-again larger than any single one of the pale, red-eared dogs and had more than twice their individual mass, but with Bitch and I both considerably more crunchable than Brutus, that fact did not comfort me overmuch. More hounds howled in the night, and with them came the cries and wails of what I could only assume was Mallt-y-Nos, leader of this Wild Hunt. I had one spell remaining, left over from the battle with Lung, and then my only magical recourse would be to wield raw forces. That could be potent, but it was extremely inefficient, and it drained the spellcaster at an alarming rate.

The three Cŵn Annwn barked and growled, and the sound was strangely muted, less like a trio of angry dog than like a flock of migrating geese heard from far away. Brutus' answering snarls were almost deafening in comparison, but didn't carry with them that sense of coldness and dread that his enemies' noises did. One of the faerie hounds lunged; Brutus snapped at it, and the faerie dog sprang back. Neither had come close to the other, but aggression had been met with aggression. Bitch was brandishing a hand-axe I hadn't noticed her picking up, and she added her voice to Brutus', accompanying his growls, barks and snarls with some surprisingly inventive angry swearing. It went on like that for a minute or two, and I had a moment where the sheer surreality of the situation hit me, and I almost started giggling like a lunatic.

When the attack came, it came from the sides, from another pair of dogs I hadn't even known were there. A pale hound bowled me over. Flashing teeth came in for my throat. In an instinct-driven moment of panic, I whipped my arm up and shoved it between those teeth and my neck.

The dog bit down and wrenched his head left and right, ripping and rending, and if I'd been even a millisecond slower, I'd have been dead. I could feel the teeth digging into my flesh, see blood soaking through my black sleeve, the silver accents stained crimson.

I screamed, and I honestly don't know if it was in terror or in outrage. I felt both. The hound didn't let go. It kept shaking, kept biting. It wasn't going to let me go unless I made it.

I brought up my other hand and shoved my fingers into its left eye, and ocular tissue gave way with a squelch. The hound twisted, released my arm, rolled frantically away from me, yelping pathetically.

Something about the sound made my insides clench.

I rolled up to my feet, sparing a glance for Bitch and Brutus as I did so: Brutus had a faerie hound by the throat with another limping away from him, bleeding from gashes along its underbelly; Bitch had backed against the wall of the barn and was using the axe to try to ward off any hounds that came too close, which wasn't working very well. Even as I spared my glance, a faerie hound sprang forward from her left; Bitch spun to face it, and then the hound to her right darted in. She'd anticipated the move, pivoted with her hips and swung the axe into the side of the hound's head. Iron bit into flesh, but the fae dog didn't stop; it bit down on her hand. Blood flowed, and the axe fell to the ground.

I lunged forward, put a hand on Bitch's shoulder, and spoke the guide words of my last spell.

A good sorceress should have an attack, defense, and escape spell ready at all times. I am not a good sorceress, but when I'd prepared my array of spells for the confrontation with Lung with Shadowjack's help, I had not neglected escape. I had prepared two offensive spells: Cardiac Arrest and the Tornado; one defensive spell, which I had repurposed into an attack on the fly: the Wall of Force; one escape spell: Swarm Escape. Swarm Escape was probably the most taxing, least efficient spell I'd created, and that had a lot to do with the nature of the magical style I was initiated into. Pattern Magic wasn't good at mutability, and it generally didn't create or destroy by its nature. It could be used to create or destroy, and it could be used in the cause of mutability, but Pattern Magic was most at home when it acted according to its nature: when it reinforced, sustained, and imposed order.

The use to which I was putting it was not one that came naturally to it. Honestly, I'd never have been able to create the spell at all without Shadowjack's help, and I doubted I could do it again on my own, but while I had it, I intended to use it.

I spoke the words. We broke apart. Our bodies, our clothing, all of it shattered into an equivalent mass of hornets. Now the average hornet weighs about 84 milligrams. There are about 450,000 milligrams in a pound. Bitch and I together massed somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 pounds.

Over a million hornets erupted from the space we had occupied, and we blotted out the light of the moon upon the village green. My perspective multiplied, became the perspective of every hornet. I was a swarm, and Bitch was in the swarm with me. There was a moment of confusion, and then the spell-wrought instincts kicked in, and I knew how to move myselves, how to escape, and how to attack.

The greater mass of myselves fled, but I sent ten thousand hornets after each faerie hound, hoping to drive them away from Brutus as Bitch and I made our escape. A few hundred of me died in the effort, and the sensation was one of the most bizarre and disconcerting I had ever experienced. I sent myself into their nostrils, I attacked their eyes, I stung their lolling tongues, and the dogs fled, yelping, into the night.

The greater swarm streamed into the bell tower of the village church, coalesced, merged. Over a million individual perspectives collapsed down into two perspectives. Insect senses became human. Hornet flesh became fluid, flowing back into two distinct and clothed human bodies. Bitch and I became ourselves again, and we did it with tens of thousands of hornets missing. The hornets who had not rejoined our main mass burst into a blue-white flame. There was wrenching sensation and a sense of wrongness; I could hear a cracking sound like splintering glass, and then pain and utter exhaustion washed over me out of all proportion to the effort of what I had done.

Bitch stared at me, her eyes wide, her face gone white with terror. "What the fuck was that?" she hissed.

"Escape… spell…" I muttered, and the effort of speaking brought fresh waves of pain and exhaustion.

I couldn't move. I couldn't stand. The world went dark. I felt myself falling, and then all sensation vanished.

* * *

The ocean of pain receded slowly, like an outgoing tide, still cresting in waves but each wave a little less than the last.

I opened my eyes.

Nothing made sense. The world I saw was a misshapen place of giants and impossible angles and colors that didn't exist, and I blinked. The world seemed to distort, and all was insubstantial as a shadow, and I blinked, and I blinked and I blinked until the world made sense and my surroundings were explicable: I was lying in a bed in a room with a thatched ceiling. There was an earthy smell. My brain hurt: the pain seemed to radiate outward from the center of my skull, and it was a new experience. It was my understanding that the brain didn't have pain receptors, which naturally raised the question of how mine could possibly be hurting.

The spell had worked. I'd drastically underestimated how much it would take out of me to reform myself without the full mass of hornets that I started with, but it had worked. It was supposed to allow me to reform from even a single wasp, but … all I could think was that I screwed up on the energy requirements somehow. After what happened when I actually used it, I was pretty sure that trying to reform from less than the majority of the mass I'd started with would have killed me.

Meaning if I'd used that spell against Lung, I would be dead. A single blast of his fire would have killed enough of the swarm that… I cut off that line of thought as a cold shiver ran down my spine. Using a swarm of wasps against a dragon seemed stupid in retrospect, but I'd gone ahead and prepared the spell anyway, and Shadowjack had helped me every step of the way. He had to have seen the danger. Had he taken my death threat personally?

The door opened, and the light from beyond the threshold was almost blinding, and a girl came through with a dog at her side. She was stout and muscular, with auburn hair and a blunt-featured face. One of her hands was wrapped in bandages. I couldn't place the expression on her face, but she crossed the space between us with a few quick strides, drew back my surprisingly itchy and uncomfortable blanket, and gave me an evaluating look.

I was pretty sure I knew her. "Rachel?" I asked.

"Bitch," she corrected.

My thoughts sharpened, my perception grew clearer. Or was it the other way around? "Bitch," I amended. "How long was I out?"

She shrugged. "Sun's directly overhead. Can you sew?"

I blinked, not entirely sure why she was asking. "Sew?"

"Needle and thread."

"A little."

"Good. Stitch my hand shut."

I stared at her, and her expression darkened.

"Stitch my fucking hand shut, Felicia," she said, and undid the bandages to reveal a series of nasty gashes and contusions from where the faerie hound had bit her right hand. It was very bad, punctures, gashes and bruises all across her hand, and and in some places there were little bits of fatty tissue sticking out through the wounds.

I sat up, and my vision swam. "I'm not sure I can stand up yet," I said.

"Do it sitting down, then," she said. She produced a small first aid kit from her jacket pocket and handed it to me. There was a needle and thread and hydrogen peroxide. She'd already cleaned the bites and sterilized the equipment, but she was right handed, and she couldn't sew it up herself.

"Is there something to numb the pain?" I asked.

"Just fucking do it," she said impatiently.

Something about her tone made me want to say no, warned me against just obeying her, but she needed my help, so I did what she asked. I sewed up her wounds. It was crude, and there would be some nasty scars, but I managed it despite the throbbing behind my eyes. She grimaced a few times, but she never made a sound. When I was done, she looked it over and nodded approvingly.

I checked over my own injury, then, and it was… not fine, but well on its way toward healing. Each tooth-mark was fully scabbed over, and there wasn't any sign of infection. So far so good. I'd always known that I healed fast, but Fiona had provided some much needed context for my regenerative abilities. According to her, I would always recover from any injury provided it didn't kill me. It might take awhile, but even amputation and severe nerve damage would heal eventually, and my body would make short work of all but the most deadly diseases, and even those I could survive. The general rule with injury was that if I made it through the first few hours, I was going to make it.

All that to say, I was going to be fine, assuming the headache didn't kill me. Which meant I had just about run out of methods to stall and otherwise avoid talking to Bitch about what she'd done last night.

I let my eyes drift shut, opened them again, and looked at my companion. "Why did you open the door and go out to face the hunt?" I asked.

"What?"

"Why did you go outside last night?"

"I don't have to tell you shit," Bitch answered.

"That's the second time you started a fight that didn't need to happen, Bitch."

She looked me in the eye and bared her teeth. "What do you know?"

I thought back to the behavior I'd seen from Bitch thus far. "I know that you don't think Brian cuts it as a leader," I told her. "It's why you undermine him constantly. How many times have you started fights he didn't want?"

"He's weak," Bitch answered.

"How?"

She regarded me suspiciously, but after a moment she answered. "He wants to be able to walk away."

"So you're giving him a reason to? Showing him just how little control he actually has?"

"Words," she said dismissively.

"Words matter," I told her and she rolled her eyes, and that reaction offended me more than I would have admitted. So I spoke them: words of power, words that made my presence in the room expand, my shadow grow more menacing, the light of the sun through the windows less bright. The act of calling up magical forces made my head spike with pain, but I didn't let it show.

Brutus began to whine, but Bitch didn't back down. "You think you can threaten me when you can't even stand up?"

"I don't need to stand up to kick your ass," I answered. "But mostly I think if you ever want to see the rest of your dogs again, you should stop pissing off the only person who can take you home."

She showed her teeth, and I tensed, readying to receive a charge from either her, Brutus, or both. I had more options than talking and fighting, but I didn't want to use them; I could have Mastered her if I worked at it, but even the fact that the thought of attempting it had occurred to me at all sent shockwaves of revulsion through my brain.

Things might have gotten worse, but at that moment the door opened and Siobhan poked her head in. I don't know how long she'd been listening in, but she took one look at us and asked, "Why are the two of you acting like a pair of boys looking for a scrap?"

The tension broke. I blushed. Bitch stalked out past Siobhan, and Brutus followed at her heels.

It was another hour before my headache receded enough that I felt mostly human again. I made an attempt at drawing a Trump to get us home, failed, grew frustrated, and went out the door onto the village green.

Bitch and Brutus were there, and Brutus let out a joyful bark as Bitch threw a stick. He raced after it, snatched it up almost the same instant it touched the ground and raced back to her, tail wagging. She threw it again, and off he went, this time outpacing the throw; he caught the stick in mid-air and came trotting back proud as could be; Bitch scratched his ears as she took the stick, then threw it again. Children had gathered to watch, and a few of the more daring were mustering up the courage to approach more closely.

I smiled almost despite myself.

"She carried you, you know," Siobhan said. "You collapsed in the belltower, and Bitch carried you to me."

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I changed the subject. "Do those dogs come every night?" I asked.

"Every night," she confirmed. "Before it became a nightly experience, it was said that to even hear the baying was an omen of death. Now…"

"Like a banshee?"

"You know your Gentle Folk. But these aren't acting the way they should. They come every night, and every night since the new moon. Eleven days, six men killed, a dozen sheep eaten, a prized bull torn to pieces, and still they don't stop."

I did some mental math based on the size of the village and the likely effect of lost workers and livestock, and I didn't like the sums I got. "Have you sent for help?"

"Aye. A messenger went to the Prince at Aber Celyn. He never returned. Our local Lord is supposed to deal with situations like this, but…"

"He's not eager to have his men eaten by faerie dogs?" I asked.

"Something like that," came a young man's voice in accented Thari, and Siobhan brightened at the sound of it.

"Emrys!" she called.

He was the same age as Siobhan, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and he was dressed in fine clothing that was notably out of place in the village. People tipped their hats and bowed as he passed. Siobhan moved to clasp his hand, but he drew her in for a hug; she stiffened, and I saw the distress on her face. "Emrys, we're in public," she hissed.

He laughed and said something in a language I didn't understand. Siobhan blushed and replied in the same language. After a short exchange, Emrys regarded me with interest.

"Felicia," Siobhan said, "may I present Lord Emrys of the house of Gwynedd, son of Rhys, heir to the lordship of this village and all its surrounding land, and a damned fool who has better things to do than waste his time with the peasants "

Emrys grinned. "What if I like wasting my time with peasants?" he asked. Just as Siobhan was about to reply, he spoke again: "Felicia, was it?"

"That's right," I said.

"It's been a long time since we have hosted nobility from Annwn. Are you here to deal with the Hunt?"

"She's not one of the Good Neighbors," Siobhan said.

"Oh. But surely a noblewoman."

I shook my head. "I'm just an ordinary…" I trailed off. I was lying, and it was obvious. I didn't like the idea of being part of any nobility, though. It was… it felt wrong. I hadn't grown up as any kind of noblewoman, and even if I was slowly getting comfortable with the idea, learning that my mother had actually been a Princess of Amber was still deeply weird to me. "Technically…" I began, then trailed off again; I had no desire to explain my lineage. Finally I sighed. "It's a long story, and I don't want to go into it," I said.

"I see," said Emrys. There was something of appraisal in his eyes, now, and I didn't like it.

"There's more, Emrys," Siobhan said in a low, excited voice. "They're witches. That dog out there is some kind of hellhound; they used it to fight the Hunt last night."

Emrys grew thoughtful. "And survived, it seems. That would explain why a noblewoman of marriageable age and her servant are wandering the countryside without a male escort."

Without a male escort? What the hell? But however much that rubbed me the wrong way, considering our medieval surroundings, maybe it wasn't a good idea to let them think I was a witch. "I'm not a witch," I said.

Both of them gave me looks of utter disbelief.

"I'm a sorceress," I said defensively.

They exchanged looks. "What's the difference?" Siobhan asked.

Everything I knew about the medieval popular ideas about witches swam through my brain. "I'm not a servant of the Devil, for one," I said. Which was true: I was his friend, not his servant. And I really needed to make a Trump of him one of these days.

"Why would anyone think you were a servant of Corwin?" Emrys asked, and Siobhan made a warding gesture when the name was spoken.

That… had not been the response I'd expected. "Corwin of Amber?" I asked.

"Again you name a creature from the unholy realm," Siobhan muttered unhappily. "Yes, him: the Demon-King of Avalon. Do you have some unhealthy interest in history's most wicked villains, Felicia?"

"Sorry," I said, and suddenly I felt a lot better about not having told them about technically being part of the royal house of Amber.

"I wonder," Emrys said. "What brings a... sorceress to Glan Mawddach at a time like this? Are you here to help?"

"Isn't that your job?" I asked. "Your family protects this land, doesn't it?"

Emrys' cheeks reddened, and I wasn't sure if it was shame or anger. His hand clenched, strayed toward the hilt of his sword, stopped, unclenched. "It is not that simple," he ground out.

"Lord Gwynedd forbade him from getting involved," Siobhan explained.

"And Lord Gwynedd hasn't gotten involved himself, or sent any of his men against the Hunt," I surmised.

Emrys looked down. "... I'm certain Father has a reason for it. Maybe he knows his men can't match the Hunt and is waiting for help to arrive." He didn't sound like he believed it.

I exchanged looks with Siobhan. "Maybe," I said.

On the green, Bitch was showing a curious little girl how to approach a dog. The girl's mother was hovering nearby, clearly anxious but just as clearly afraid to step in. I caught some of the conversation. Neither spoke a common language, but that didn't seem to stop them.

The girl asked something while pointing at Brutus.

"Brutus," Bitch answered tersely.

The little girl held out a hand and asked something else. Probably, "Can I pet him?" Her body language was amazingly expressive.

Bitch looked to Brutus, then back to the little girl. "He'll tell you," she said.

The girl spoke a single word as a question.

"So you want our help?" I asked.

Emrys nodded. "I… the village won't survive another fortnight of this."

"So you want our help," I repeated.

"Yes."

I looked around at the village and took in the sight of the people. A little girl was letting Brutus sniff her hand. A mother was watching with worried eyes. People were afraid of us, and for themselves. An old man struggled to load a wagon. A man my dad's age was staring at me, had been for a while, and there was a hungry look in his eyes that made me uncomfortable even as I couldn't quite place it. There were more. Fat, skinny, tall, short, ugly and beautiful people. They were people I didn't know and who didn't know me, a handful of them probably meant me harm, and I had no reason to put myself on the line for them except…

I'd wanted to be a hero. Maybe this wasn't where and how I'd planned to make my debut, but these people needed my help, and as much as I didn't want to get involved, the people in charge had failed them. If I didn't help, who would?

"Okay," I said. "No promises, but I'll do what I can."

Siobhan and Emrys both smiled. "Thank you," each said in turn.

I shook my head. "Don't thank me yet. The Hunt will be back at sundown, right?"

Siobhan nodded.

"I need to know everything there is to know about the Wild Hunt, the hounds, and Mallt-y-Nos before then. What they are, where they come from, what they want, where they've been each night since the first. Everything."

It wasn't a short telling, and what was told was sometimes contradictory, but the pair explained what we were facing as best they could. Bitch came over halfway through and listened with a thoughtful scowl; I started translating for her once I knew she was listening.

The Cŵn Annwn, according to local tales, belonged to the king of the Otherworld: Gwynn Ap Nudd. Supposedly, their task was the hunting of evildoers, usually murderers and thieves and those who had offended the Fair Folk. They were supposed to be confined to the mountains of Cadair Idris, wherever those were, but they had come far afield to hunt here. Mallt-y-Nos was a fairy crone who rode with the Hunt, chasing lost souls and unfortunate travelers to Annwn - the Otherworld. None whom she had pursued there have ever returned. Other lords and ladies of Fairy occasionally rode with the Hunt, and neither Siobhan nor Emrys knew if any had accompanied Mallt-y-Nos. There had been sightings of at least twelve hounds with this hunt, and Bitch and I had only seen five last night. Which raised the question: where had the other seven dogs and the hunters been?

"Do you have something from the dogs that weren't part of our fight?" Bitch asked. I translated for her.

"What?" Emrys asked.

"Shit. Piss. Fur. Blood."

Emrys gave me a questioning look, and then said, "There are… yes."

"Show me."

Emrys led, and the rest of us followed, and after a few minutes we had left the village behind, crossed the bridge over the river, and passed into the Lord's Wood. The sun was westering in the sky, the shadows just beginning to lengthen; I was out of spells and exhausted, and shaping even minor magical forces brought my headache back full force like a Thinker who's abused her power. Bitch had one dog with her and only had the use of one hand, my arm still ached where the faerie hounds had bitten it, and we were off to discover the purpose and challenge the might of the Wild Hunt with help from a plucky young blacksmith's daughter and her noble boyfriend.

I'd have asked what could go wrong, but I was starting to think giving the universe a straight line was a bad idea.


	21. 3,6 - Steer Your Way

So, this whole thing ballooned beyond what I intended. I'd only meant for the entire adventure post-Lung to last for the duration of a chapter, and it grew into three. Yikes.

* * *

 **To Walk in Shadow  
** (Worm/Chronicles of Amber)  
by P.H Wise

3.6 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

The woods were well kept and ordered, the trails were clear, and it was mostly birches and English oaks. The light took on a green quality as it filtered through the leaves, and shadows made strange patterns on the forest floor. The day was warm, and the air was filled with dusty sunlight, birdsong, and the distant sound of buzzing wings.

Brutus led the way through that green-lit shimmer of shaken shadows along the forest floor; it had been Emrys at first, but he had led us to a hawthorn tree whose bark was splashed with faerie blood, and at Bitch's signal, Brutus had taken the lead. His nose was pressed to the ground as he followed the trail, occasionally pausing to lift his leg and urinate on a tree or bush beside the trail.

After ten minutes, Brutus' body language changed. His ears went forward, he closed his mouth, and he held his tail out straight behind him, wagging it very slightly from side to side. Then he walked into the underbrush and pawed at the dirt a few times.

"Did he find something?" I asked.

Bitch moved forward to examine what Brutus had found. "Dogshit," she said. "Fresh. Maybe half an hour old." It was… appropriately sized to have come out of a dog the size of a horse.

I translated her words, and Emrys and Siobhan began to look about fearfully.

"Does your father own any dogs?" I asked.

Emrys nodded. "He has a pack of hunting hounds. But that isn't from them."

We went on, soon leaving the wood and making a rough circuit around the manor of Lord Rhys Gwynedd and its grounds, and finding regular signs of the faerie dogs. I looked to Emrys. "Has your house been attacked?"

He shook his head. "Not since the first night. There was a skirmish near the kennels, but since then, nothing."

"Let's have a look at the kennels," I said.

"It's just where father keeps his dogs," Emrys said. "I don't see how visiting with Ianto is going to help us get to the bottom of anything."

At my questioning look, Siobhan clarified: "Ianto is the houndmaster. He's a grumpy old man, but not completely horrible."

"There's something here that the fairy dogs are interested in," I said. "I want to know what."

We went to see the houndmaster.

The kennel was near the house, not quite twenty meters long and a little more than nine long. It was surprisingly ornate, fenced in, and had two stories. The dogs lived on the bottom floor, and they started barking as we approached.

Brutus tensed, but a command from Bitch kept him under control. Bitch scowled at the kennel, taking note of its closed doors and the frantic scrabbling of claws against wood. Dog and girl circled the kennel, and the barking grew louder and more frenzied, to the point where I started to wonder exactly how study those doors were.

It didn't come to that. Bitch and Brutus finished their circuit of the kennel and moved off toward the house. Guards and house staff took note as we went by, but nobody challenged us; the most we got was a few long looks and the occasional, "My Lord," directed at Emrys.

The manor, the grounds in general, all of it had been fortified as if to endure a siege. A palisade surrounded the manor - the kennel was inside it - and towers had been erected around it at regular intervals, each manned by a pair of archers. The guards not in the towers - the Lord's fighting men - bore spears and daggers, and more than one took note of the sword and pistol I had sheathed on either hip. At least, I assumed that's what they were taking note of.

Once we were close to one of the manor's side doors, Bitch froze, frowned, and looked my way. "There's a dog in the cellar," she said.

"How do you know?"

"My power's got range," she answered. "Don't need to see a dog to use it."

I blinked. She could sense dogs? Huh. I translated for Emrys and Siobhan, and Emrys frowned. "There shouldn't be dogs in the cellar," he said. That was all it took to convince Bitch to go looking. A minute or two later, she had thrown open the cellar door, and we were descending the stairwell in single file.

It was a little dim and it had a certain underground chill, and we walked passed racks and racks of what might have been wine bottles before we came to a solid oak door. Emrys hesitated in front of it. "Wait," he said, and there was nervousness in his voice that hadn't been there before. "That's my father's workshop. I… we really shouldn't go in there without his permission."

"Dog's in there," Bitch said.

I took hold of the stuff of Shadow and put a spin on the local probabilities. "It probably isn't locked," I said. "We'll go in and out, and he'll never know about it."

Emrys shook his head. "He always locks this door," he said. "Always."

"Trust me," I said, and reached for the door handle.

It was locked. I frowned. "First time for everything," I muttered. I made another adjustment to the local Shadow, twisting probabilities once more before I checked a little nook in the wall that wasn't immediately obvious to the casual observer, and despite my effort to subtly rewrite a tiny part of this universe for our convenience, there was no key within. Lord Rhys must have been obsessively careful with the key to his workshop.

"I told you," Emrys said.

Okay, then. To hell with subtlety. I took hold of the door handle and turned it hard. There was resistance, and it actually took effort before the lock snapped and the handle turned. Then I forced the door open, and the latch came free with a crack of wood giving way and a tiny squeal of protesting metal.

The door swung open, and both Emrys and Siobhan stared at me with wide eyes.

"Not of the Fair Folk and not a witch," Siobhan murmured. "Are you a demon, Felicia?"

I didn't answer.

Bitch and I stepped into the workshop.

A red candle flashed alight and I felt a rush of uncomfortable prickling sensation through my limbs the second I crossed the threshold. Mystical sigils and sorcerous inscriptions that had lain dormant upon the walls began to glow with a baleful light, and the prickling grew more intense. I called up my Pattern-sight and saw that the room was all but crackling with magical forces woven together in surprisingly unsubtle ways.

I realized what I was looking at after only a few moments of thought: wards. These were wards set to bar supernatural creatures from entering or exiting the room, and I was apparently supernatural enough to be affected by them. Lord Rhys either was or employed a sorcerer, and we had just alerted them to our presence. All of that flashed through my head even as I took in the details: active magical circle, magical operation in progress within it, a tiny white puppy with red ears tied up and helpless at its center.

The puppy was covered in tiny puncture wounds, some of them fresher than others; some of her fur had been shaved off, and she was whimpering through her muzzle.

Bitch started forward, and she visibly resisted the urge to punch me when I stopped her with an upraised hand. "The circle could be trapped," I said.

It wasn't just that. Disrupting an active magical operation could have negative consequences for anyone nearby, and while I was reasonably confident in my ability to survive it, I would prefer to know more about those consequences than, "Doing this probably won't kill me" before I had to deal with them.

I studied the circle and the magical operation in progress within it. Before my Pattern-sight, the lines of force which connected these things were immediately obvious, shining within and above the circle like an intricate spider web made from incandescent filament or a cat's cradle of eldritch light. Admittedly, compared to Fiona or Shadowjack's spellwork, this was downright simplistic, but it had a certain elegance of function all the same: whoever had made this, while not a magical heavyweight, at least knew what they were doing.

But the more I studied the working, the more I came to see that there was a fundamental flaw in its construction: not an error, but a systemic instability inherent to the magical style. Several lines of speculation suggested themselves, and I wanted to follow them, but there wasn't time, nor was there time to analyze the working to determine its specific function. Bitch was already impatient, and though the discomfort of being within the wards was no longer increasing, neither was it fading; the sensation had grown from uncomfortable tingling into something a bit like being exposed to a minor electrical current.

There were no obvious traps in the working or in the structure of the circle set to go off if it was disrupted, so, with the image of the Pattern fixed within my thoughts, I reached out with my own line of magical force and, taking care to arrange things to direct any backlash away from me, the puppy, or my companions, I sort of poked a hole in the fabric of reality through the junction of energies that was sustaining the mystic circle and the magical operation within it. It wasn't something I would ever have dared to attempt with a more complex magical circle or working, but this one was simple enough to have obvious failure points.

There was a flare of octarine light that encompassed the entire ritual circle and which swiftly dazzle-decayed into a crumbling prismatic shell. It broke down in irregular hexagonal chunks, occasionally sending out lashes of mindless, destructive magical residue that scored the walls, bleached bits of the floor, and melted a few arcane instruments on the shelves.

Simultaneous with the release of impossible light, the ground lurched as if the Earth itself were a bell that had suddenly been struck. Cracks ran up the walls, my headache surged, and for a few wild moments I wondered if I had broken the universe.

I hadn't. I'd broken the enchantment and taken a magical backlash to the face, but I was intact, and it wasn't as bad as it could have been; I had succeeded in redirecting the energies, and most of it had been absorbed by the ground and by the structure of the manor.

I lowered my hand, and Bitch dashed forward to cut the puppy's bonds. Gently, tenderly, she lifted the little dog into her arms; the puppy whimpered, shivered, and then started licking Bitch's fingers.

"What did you just do?!" Emrys asked, his eyes wide.

A sonorous baritone voice answered from the doorway behind us: "Poked her head in where it damn well doesn't belong."

Emrys and Siobhan blanched. Bitch directed a fierce glare at the newcomer, and Brutus growled.

I turned.

A man stood in the doorway, tall, angry, bearded and well-groomed, his dark eyes blazing with anger as he regarded us. "Haven't I told you never to poke about in my workshop?" Lord Rhys asked in a dangerously conversational tone.

"Father," Emrys began, "I…"

"Silence."

Emrys shut his mouth.

"You're the reason the Hunt came to Glan Mawddach," I said. "You stole a puppy from the hounds of the Wild Hunt."

"Obviously," Lord Rhys replied, and never had I heard a single word spoken with such sarcastic contempt.

"Why? You had to know the Hunt would follow. Your village can't survive them much longer. Why would you steal a faerie puppy? Why would you fucking torture it? Explain this to me."

"I will not be spoken to in such a manner," Lord Rhys hissed.

"Father," Emrys asked. "Why? Why jeopardize our treaties with the Fair Folk? What could you possibly gain that is worth that?"

"Silence!" Rhys snapped. "I won't warn you again, boy. I have tolerated your dalliances with peasants and your unhealthy interests, but I will not stand for disobedience and disrespect. It seems I must discipline you." Rhys spoke a word and made a gesture, and Emrys fell to his knees and screamed. Another gesture cut off the sound, leaving Emrys to scream in total silence. Then Rhys' eyes went back to me. "But first. How dare you speak to me as though you were my equal. Who do you think you are, girl? I am the Lord of this place. My word is law, and none will gainsay me, and certainly not a woman."

I saw the magical forces responding to his will with my Pattern-sight: They coiled around his right arm as he spoke the guide-words of his spell. I called forth the image of the Pattern, invisible to non-sorcerers, and raised it before me like a shield. The act made my temples throb, and I doubted I could have managed anything in the way of spellwork, but I didn't have to; the energies of his spell lashed out like a viper, a working that would have boiled the blood in my veins. It struck against the upraised image of the Pattern, and the magical operation shattered against it. Both of my arms went completely numb and I rocked backward, and Lord Rhys stared at me with eyes wide. Or more accurately, he stared at the sign of the Pattern which I had raised.

"That…" His face had gone pale. "That is the true Pattern, and unbroken. You are a demon of Amber." His words were spoken low, in a tone that was half awe, half terror. "You won't find me easy prey, child of Oberon. I won't let you reap the benefits of my research; I'll kill…" Whatever he had been about to say ended in a pained gasp; he had forgotten Bitch, but Bitch had not forgotten him.

She came in low; he had turned to face me, and the act had exposed his back. She planted a knife in his kidney, twisted it, and then wrenched it back out. The sound of the knife coming free was utterly disgusting, and it was only after it had come free that Rhys cried out.

Emrys' mouth dropped open in horror.

"How… dare you," Lord Rhys hissed. He spoke guide words to another spell, then, and a golden web flew from his outstretched fingers, caught Bitch and carried her to the far wall with an audible thud. Then the golden web began to cut into her skin, and I realized that if I couldn't undo it, it was going to slowly dice her into irregular cubes of flesh: It was a torture spell intended to provide an agonizing death. Even as it opened a gridwork of cuts across her body, Bitch snarled, "Brutus, kill."

Rhys gestured at me, next, spoke his guide words, but Siobhan tackled him to the ground before he could finish. He flung her off of him, gestured at her, and began to speak.

Brutus, double his ordinary size and covered in bony protrusions, lunged over Siobhan's prone form, caught Rhys' throat in his jaws, and bit down hard.

The sound of a human neck breaking is surprisingly distinctive, and I don't think I will ever forget it. There, in his magical workshop in the cellar beneath his manor, Lord Rhys died, and whatever his reasons for doing what he had done, they died with him.

It took me two tries to take apart the torture-death spell Bitch was caught in, but when it was done, she limped over and kicked Rhys' body twice.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Fucker tortured a puppy," Bitch said, and spat on the corpse.

Undoing the binding on Emrys was the next task, and by the time I'd done that, Siobhan was back on her feet. Neither of them looked like they could quite believe what had just happened. "You…" Emrys began, "you killed…"

And we had. That was just the sort of week it had been. I had seen more of death than I ever cared to. I'd killed the guards at the ABB 'Farm', probably killed Bakuda, killed Lung, maybe created an entire universe for the sole purpose of destroying it. I smiled tiredly. "Yeah," I said. "We did. But more people will die unless we give that puppy back to the Wild Hunt."

Emrys swallowed, then nodded faintly. "The Hunt," he echoed.

"He called you a child of Oberon," Siobhan said. "A demon of Amber."

"He did," I said.

She didn't ask the question she obviously wanted to, what she obviously was afraid to.

"How long till sunset?" I asked.

Emrys didn't answer, his gaze fixed upon the middle distance even if his eyes were pointed at his father's corpse.

"Two hours, maybe," Siobhan answered.

We used them. Siobhan tended to Emrys; Bitch tended to the puppy; we kept Lord Rhys's death a secret for now and relocated into the manor above us, and I sent for some pasteboard, settled down, cleared my mind, and began to draw.

Two hours and three failed attempts later, I had a working trump card, once again depicting Lisa. The previous one I'd made of her had only been temporary, done on ordinary paper; this one was made to last. When it was done, I focused on the card until it grew cold in my hand. Lisa's image came to life, and I felt the sensation of mental contact.

She was lying in bed, dressed in plaid pajamas, hair loose upon her pillow. The room was dark, and on her night stand, an alarm clock declared that it was 1:00 in the morning, but she had not been asleep. She blinked, rubbed her eyes and sat up. "Taylor?"

"Hey Lisa."

"This is going a little far to avoid having to buy a phone."

I rolled my eyes. "Did I wake you?" I asked, even though I knew I hadn't; if I had contacted her via Trump and she had been asleep, assuming she didn't block the connection, the image that appeared on the card would have been whatever she was dreaming about. I'd learned that from being on the receiving end with Fiona during my month with her.

Lisa studied my face. "You and Bitch need my help," she surmised.

"I want to hold this connection to you while we do something dangerous," I told her.

"To give you a quick exit if you need one."

I nodded.

"Give me details," she said.

I did. And by the time I was done filling her in on the events we'd been caught up in, the sun had well and truly set. The moon hung low on the horizon, large enough to bring back thoughts of that doomed world where Lung had died. The stars blazed in unfamiliar constellations overhead, and in the distance, the hounds of the Wild Hunt began to howl.

I met the others in the foyer: Bitch with Brutus in tow, Siobhan, Emrys. Emrys's eyes were red as if he'd been crying, but no other sign of tears showed upon him. There was activity outside - the guards had been organized in the time I had been drawing - and Emrys nodded to me as I arrived.

"Felicia," he said, "I can't thank you for what you and your companion have done. If you can resolve matters with the Hunt, maybe you'll deserve my thanks, but…" A storm of emotion passed behind his eyes. "He was my father."

I nodded and kept my mouth shut, certain that anything I said would only make things worse.

Siobhan put a hand on Emrys's shoulder, and he let her.

Bitch and I walked out the door, and Brutus followed. The guard stood in ranks on either side, silent, regarding us with unfriendly eyes. We walked between them to the palisade gate, went through, and entered into the Lord's Wood, and the forest was heavy with fog.

There were no night birds, no insect sounds, only a heavy silence occasionally lifted by the wind through the leaves. Brutus' hackles went up; the dog began to growl, but Bitch stayed him with a gesture.

Smoke-like shapes in forest-shadow, drifting against the wind, drifting, a shadow over the moon and the chill of the grave. There came the faintest whispery howl, and when I heard it I knew the Wild Hunt was on top of us. They descended from the canopy, white dogs with red-tipped ears taking shape out of smoke. First one, then another, then two more, then three, five, eight, and more still. Thirty three dogs the size of full grown horses gave us their full and undivided attention, their eyes glowing like campfire sparks. Far more dogs than had come last night. Had reinforcements been sent because of us?

A horse approached out of the fog, white, shining, silver studs, with his nose in flames. A white-haired woman rode upon him all in black, a bow strung across her right shoulder and a quiver full of arrows across her left. A silver hunting horn hung from her belt, and she was beautiful and terrible; there was no youth in her, but an almost geological sense of antiquity that had taken none of her vitality. Had this creature ever been young? I doubted it. She was old and strong, lovely and utterly inhuman. Her horse approached us with a dreamlike slowness, each step flowing into the next as though the beast were moving under water.

The line of faerie dogs parted for her, and she stopped her horse just beyond them. When she spoke, her voice was rich and multilayered with the slightest hint of a rasp that brought to mind the sound of tree-branches creaking in the wind: "Thou hast interfered in a lawful hunt, mortal woman." It wasn't immediately obvious if she was addressing me or Bitch.

"Your hunt was killing innocent people," I said. "The village was dying, and no one there had done anything to deserve that."

Her gaze shifted, focused exclusively upon me. I looked her in the eye, and all at once I knew her, and she knew me. Her eyes betrayed her surprise, but only for a moment. Then "A Lord and his land are one," she said. "A daughter of Oberon should know that better than most. Yet I welcome you, Lady of Amber, in accordance with the ancient law." She inclined her head to me.

"Bitch," I said, and gestured. Bitch produced the hellhound puppy from her jacket pocket, commanded Brutus to stay, and took a step forward. The puppy was looking a little better, her wounds had been treated, but she was still weak. She licked Bitch's fingers and wagged her tail as she was set down on the ground.

One of the faerie dogs padded forward and sniffed the puppy, licked her, and then fixed its gaze on Bitch, and Bitch stood her ground with a loose stance, head held high, mouth slightly open, nothing aggressive in her posture but also nothing submissive. They stood like that for almost a minute before the dog relaxed.

"The Lord who stole the dog?" Mallt-y-Nos asked.

"Dead."

She shifted from Thari to English, then. "What is thy name, mortal woman?" she asked.

"Bitch," Bitch answered.

"And did the Lord Rhys die at thy hand?"

Bitch nodded. "I killed him. Brutus helped." She indicated her dog.

"A service has been paid to us," Mallt-y-Nos murmured. "By thy hand our enemy destroyed, by thy hand the stolen pup returned. The court of Gwyn ap Nudd owes you a debt, mortal woman."

Bitch nodded.

"There must be balance. Never give a thing without receiving something of equal value in turn; never receive a thing without giving a thing of equal value in kind. I offer you this hound you have rescued. Take her as your own. That will answer the first part of our debt. For the second, I grant you this token." She produced a broach shaped like a silver oak leaf. "Once and once only, you may use this to call upon us for a service of equal value to what is owed. We will come."

Bitch took the broach and pocketed it. "The puppy's too young to leave her mother," she said.

"That ship has sailed," said Mallt-y-Nos, gesturing to the puppy "She's yours. Treat her well, or we will avenge her."

Bitch hesitated, and then she took the tiny white puppy and returned her to her jacket pocket.

"You'll leave the village alone?" I asked.

"Have no fear, Daughter of Oberon," Mallt-y-Nos said. "The offender is dead. The only obligation that now exists between us and any mortal in this place is the one that Bitch incurred when she took vengeance on our behalf. Our business is done."

With those words, the faerie dogs seemed to melt away into the fog; Mallt-y-Nos turned her horse, looked back at us over her shoulder. "We will meet again," she said.

I focused on the image of Lisa, still connected to me telepathically through the open Trump connection. "Lisa? We're ready."

Bitch put her hand on my shoulder and took hold of Brutus' collar with the other; the puppy poked her head out from inside Bitch's jacket pocket but stayed put. I reached out toward the image of Lisa, and she clasped my hand; Bitch, Brutus and I all stepped forward, and then we were in Lisa's living room in Brockton Bay, leaving Mallt-y-Nos with our rainbow afterimages.

"I have so many questions," Lisa said.

I smiled. "Like?"

"Let's start with what happened to Lung," Lisa said.

"Taylor killed him with the Moon," Bitch said.

Lisa eyed me. Then a slow smirk spread across her face. "You killed him with the Moon," she echoed.

I blushed.


	22. Shadowjack

**To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

Shadowjack

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. This chapter contains some dialogue from Jack of Shadows. That is also by Roger Zelazny. Please support the official release.

* * *

There was a shape that haunted the dreams of the creature that called itself Shadowjack. Its skin was white, shiny, and blotched with blue marks; it looked like something that had started out to be a man but had never quite made it. It was a twisted, smooshed, hole-poked creature. It had less a head than a head-bulge. Bones showed through the transparent flesh of its torso, and the creature's thick legs ended in disk-shaped pads from which dozens of long toes hung like worms. Its arms were longer than its entire body. It gave the impression of a crushed slug, of a thing frozen and thawed before it was fully baked. It was a nightmare of false life, a Frankenstein's monster created by magic and animated by the power of the Dung Pits of Glyve, and it had one purpose and one purpose alone: his ruin.

It was called the Borshin, and during his confinement within the Jewel - a mystical trap designed to confine one such as he, who could by his nature pass through any shadow - by his enemy, the Lord of Bats, it had been his tormentor, his foe and, for time beyond counting, his only company. Jack had approached madness during his captivity, sometimes longing to see the Borshin if only to know that another creature existed and regarded him who was not the Lord of Bats or that cruel facsimile of the woman he loved whom the Lord of Bats had tormented him with from time to time. Even here, on this strange new world, this Earth-Bet, the Borshin haunted his dreams, and he wondered if even here he might hear its strange, ululating hunting cry some night as he went about such business as Jacks saw fit to pursue.

It was not all he dreamed of. Sometimes he dreamed that he held the Grand Key of Kolwynia, which was Chaos and Formation, and with it unlocked the sky and the earth, the sea and the wind, bidding them to fall upon the Lord of Bats and his fortress from all corners of the world. He dreamt that there the flame was born and the Lord of Bats was held in its heart forever like an ant in amber, but alive, sleepless and feeling. Exulting in this, he heard the sudden chatter of the World Machine, and as that chatter blended into the cry of the Borshin, Jack woke upon his bed, sweat-drenched and panting.

A person lay with him, an ephemeral human of uncertain gender to whom Jack had granted with his magic the ability to reshape their body to match their mood: male or female according to their wish, and not a glamour but a true transformation. It had been a difficult working with the mana level of this world as low as it was, but he had pulled it off. They were a parahuman named Circus, and he found their company pleasant enough. Theirs was not a coupling born of love: but of boredom, convenience, and perhaps of some muted desire to know and to be known, but it had been a pleasant diversion for both parties involved.

"You okay?" Circus asked, for Jack's tossing and turning had wakened them.

"Well enough," Jack answered.

"Bad dreams?" Circus asked.

Jack nodded, and an understanding passed between them.

This Earth-Bet was so different from the One-Half-World of his home. There, on a world which never turned, with one half in perpetual day and the other in perpetual night, things made sense. Science ruled the day and magic the night. Even if he had intended to prove magic the stronger of the two, it seemed to Jack entirely reasonable that the two forces should exist in a rough sort of parity.

Granted, magic and science could give contradictory answers that couldn't possibly both be true, but Jack had asked his friend, Morningstar, about that not too long ago, wishing to know how the stars which he knew to be near and the houses of spirits and deities could be seen by the daysiders as impossibly distant and housing no intelligence.

"You were both correct," Morningstar had told him. "It is the same thing that you both describe, although neither of you sees it as it really is. Each of you colors reality in keeping with your means of controlling it. For if it is uncontrollable, you fear it. In your case, a nearby house of spirits; in theirs, a distant ball of plasma."

He had pressed Morningstar, then: "Which view is correct?" he had asked.

"They all are. As many views as there are viewers."

"But to see it as it is, beneath it all! Is this possible?"

Morningstar hadn't replied.

"You," Jack said. "Have you looked upon reality?"

"I— Once … I await the sunrise. That is all."

The stars here were not like the stars of the One Half World. Here, no spirits, deities, or star rulers had answered his spells of communication, and even his magical attempts to commune with the angelic Simurgh, whom he knew to be in the sky, had given him only a cold feeling of contact and a peculiar buzzing silence in reply, as if she spoke, but with a voice that had passed beyond the range of his hearing, and it had disappointed him, for he had thought she might be good company.

Here, science ruled, magic barely survived on the outskirts of reality, and though every human in the One Half World possessed a soul (just as he and his fellow Nightsiders lacked them), he had yet to see any evidence that the humans of Earth Bet had souls of any kind. And if they didn't, why did they behave in a manner seemingly indistinguishable from the humans that he knew to possess them on the Dayside of his home?

Another snippet of his conversation with Morningstar came back to him, then:

"I would show that my magic is superior to their science—for one day it will be."

"It would seem unhealthy for either to gain supremacy," Morningstar had replied.

"Not if you are on the side that obtains it."

That was the rub, wasn't it? Here, he wasn't on the winning side, and he hated it. It was unhealthy, and he hated that, too. It made him long to possess Kolwynia all the more, that he might use it to correct this magic-deprived universe, and reshape it into something that actually made sense.

This wasn't helping. Rumination rarely did, and all his thoughts seemed to be doing was moving is disjointed circles. He needed to rob someone. It had been too long. He had laid low to avoid the wrath of Fiona of Amber and to fulfill his obligation, but no more.

"Tell me, Circus, how would you like to humiliate…" Shadowjack paused a moment in thought. "The Empire Eighty Eight. The Teeth. The Protectorate. The Triumvirate. The Slaughterhouse Nine. Someone like that?"

Circus raised an eyebrow. "You think you can pull off humiliating one of them and get out alive?"

Jack smiled the devil's smile, and Circus laughed. "Fuck," they said, "long as the pay is good."

That was how it started. And before it ended, the whole world would know of Jack, Whose Name Is Spoken In Shadow. And if even then he felt the beginning of the Borshin's slow approach to Earth Bet through the incalculable distance that divided the place from the One-Half-World through Shadow, he gave no sign, nor would he have done anything differently on that account.

He was, after all, who he was: thief, prisoner in the Jewel, devourer of the Stone That Eats, drinker of the blood of vampires, Jack of Shadows.


	23. 3,7 - Steer Your Way

Author's note: This is only half of what I had intended to write for this chapter. Plus side, that means the next chapter will come out much sooner than it otherwise would have.

To Walk in Shadow

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

3.7 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. It was as simple as that; one moment we were in the moonlit wood making peace between Siobhan and Emrys' village and the Otherworld, the next we were in Lisa's bedroom in Brockton Bay. Trump cards, I decided, were bullshit, and I needed to make more of them as soon as possible.

But first. But first I needed rest. My head still throbbed, and the scabbed-over punctures along my arm itched unpleasantly. We were in one of Lisa's safe houses, but Bitch wasn't interested in staying. "Need to check on my dogs," she said, and that was progress: before our shared adventure, I doubt she would have bothered to explain anything to me.

Lisa let her go. As Bitch walked out the door the fairy-pup raised her little head sleepily to peek out from inside Bitch's jacket pocket where she'd been dozing.

Brutus followed after.

"You look tired," Lisa said.

"I am tired. How long were we away?"

"Four days," Lisa answered. She saw something in my eyes. "It was less time for you," she surmised.

"Two days, maybe," I said. "Time got weird when we had to Hell-Ride our way out of the Moon crashing into the Earth, but we definitely spent at least one night and all the next day."

The shrill wail of a police siren started suddenly. I saw flashing lights through the apartment window on a street three blocks away, and then the siren went down in pitch as the police car went past. It was one of those SUV things the police department had started buying late last year. They were ugly things, but the BBPD kept buying them, and they were starting to outnumber the Crown Victorias on the streets. A PRT van followed the police vehicle, lights flashing but no siren.

I wasn't too tired for a shower. I felt gross, and the soap, hot water, shampoo and conditioner helped. Afterward, I used some of Lisa's moisturizer and dressed myself in plaid pajamas that were exactly my size. Lisa raised an eyebrow at them when I came out to the main room, and I just smiled and didn't explain where I'd gotten them from.

"What happened?" she asked. Nothing about this apartment spoke of Lisa's personality. It was generic. The decor was just... normal. A place to lay low for a few days, but not a place she lived.

"Can I tell you in the morning?"

She studied my face, came to a decision, nodded. "Sure."

I went to bed. Another police siren wailed somewhere far away, but I paid it no mind. I sank into the bed's softness, settled my head on the pillow, closed my eyes, and went away.

When I came back, the first thing I noticed was a warmth across my face. After that, it was the awareness of light through closed eyelids. Next the warmth and comfortable softness of the bed, the blankets, the pillows. City sounds. Traffic moving on the streets. Birdsong from far away.

I opened my eyes. The sun shone on my face through the window. My thoughts de-muddled, and I was awake; I was awake, and I didn't hurt. The absence of pain can be a pleasure all its own, and I almost sighed in relief when I felt it. My head no longer throbbed; my arm still itched a little, but that was all. I went to the sink and cleaned my arm before I did my morning ablutions. The scabs were about ready to come off, and the flesh around the scabs was no longer inflamed. I knew from experience that the wounds would be completely gone by tomorrow, leaving behind no sign that it had ever been there.

Once again, I considered myself in the mirror, and I could no longer see any sign of the fire Lung had burned me with. Every burn was fully healed, every trace of a scar broken down and transformed into normal, healthy skin. My eye no longer discolored. My hair was still short, but it was starting to show some body again, and it was long enough to start to curl.

For the first time in a long while, I wasn't ashamed of what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I actually smiled at the sight of my own image, and it felt good.

When I was done in the bathroom, I dressed myself in an emerald green blouse over my costume's black and silver trousers.

Lisa wasn't there when I came out. I wasn't concerned. I could speak to her, go to her, whenever I wanted thanks to the image I'd drawn on that pasteboard card, imbued with the power of the Pattern. There was a laptop on a writing desk in the main room with a Post-It note stuck to the back of it. The Post-It read: "Stepped out. Back soon. TT"

Okay then. Looked like I had some time on my hands. After I checked in with Lisa through the Trump to confirm that she would be another hour, I settled in, opened the laptop, and checked the news to catch up on what I had missed while Bitch and I had been away.

'THE BROCKTON BAY BOMBER,' said the headline. There was a picture beneath. A girl. Eighteen years old, maybe. Dark hair and blue eyes. Pretty. Mixed ancestry. European and maybe Japanese, maybe Korean. She was smiling in the picture. I read a little of the article, got far enough to see the words, "1,407 dead, hundreds still missing in the second worst non-Endbringer parahuman attack on American soil…" and the bottom fell out of my stomach.

I skimmed the rest of the article. The girl's name was Seka Nakane. Brash. Confident. Straight-A student. One day, a few months back, she had bombed Cornell University with tinker-tech explosives. She had disappeared after, only for her corpse to be discovered outside one of the ABB Farms.

I furrowed my brow. One of? There had been more than just the one? And how had she launched a campaign of terror after her death? The answer came immediately: dead man's switch.

Years after this, my cousin told me that the headwaters of shit creek were a cruel and treacherous expanse, and I can't think of a better way to describe how it felt at that moment: In the headwaters of shit creek, no paddle, about to hit the rapids, and I knew I hadn't even reached the main creek yet.

I closed the article and navigated to Parahumans Online.

* * *

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Topic: Brockton Bay Emergency: READ THIS NOW [Pinned]

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Reave (Original Poster) (Verified PRT Agent)

Posted On May 26th 2011:

Attention all citizens of Brockton Bay: there has been a major parahuman incident involving multiple explosions across the city. REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES. If you are not at home, seek shelter immediately. The PRT, Protectorate, and the BBPD are in the process of gaining control of the situation. This post has been made in conjunction with the use of the Emergency Broadcast System. Updates will be provided as we receive more information. REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES. If you are not at home, seek shelter immediately.

UPDATE:

Officials believe the explosions were the result of tinker-made bombs placed around the city by a criminal parahuman working for the ABB. There is a suspect, and a manhunt is currently under way. REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES. If you are not at home, continue to shelter in place.

UPDATE:

The main suspect in this case has been found, dead. Seven others who may have cooperated with the suspect have been apprehended. Although the city is still under a state of emergency, the lockdown is now lifted. Do not approach any suspicious devices or packages. If you see such a device or package, report it to the police immediately and leave the area.

 **Replies have been disabled for this post.**

Topic: Lung vs Undersiders

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)(The Guy in the Know)

Posted On Apr 30th 2011:

Well, looks like we were right. My sources are telling me that Lung hit the Undersiders at their hideout last night and completely destroyed the place. Guess he wasn't ready to bury the hatchet after they hit his casino early this month. To make things worse, it looks like he used Tinker-made explosives instead doing his normal dragon rampage. No word yet on whether any of the Undersiders survived.

Edit: God damn. Death by black hole bomb confirmed. Ugly way to go.

Edit2: Or not. Turns out they escaped. Somehow? PRT says they, or maybe just whoever survived, were the group that hit Lung last night, just before the bombings started.

(Showing page 1 of 97)

►OurLadyOfTheUpsideDown

Replied On Apr 30th 2011:

When Lung is ready to bury the hatchet, he buries it in your spine.

►Mooninite314

Replied On Apr 30th 2011:

OurLadyOfTheUpsideDown

That's not funny.

►ReadytoBrock

Replied On Apr 30th 2011:

Isnt it a big deal a cape to attack another cape's house? I heard taht was a big deal.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX

Replied On May 1st 2011:

I haerd the Undersiders got sucked into a miniature black hole and because of time dilation they were still falling into the event horizon when the PRT showed up.

►Mooninite314

Replied On Jan 1st 2011:

[USER=345265]XxVoid_CowboyxX[/USER]

That is also not funny.

* * *

I scrolled down, then clicked to the last page of commentary.

* * *

►SisterEye (Unverified Cape)

Replied On May 29th 2011:

It's not like the Undersiders had much choice. Lung didn't just try to kill them the night they robbed him. He had his gang hunt them down and tried to kill them all at their home. And that's not the first time he did something like that. Lung never, ever followed the rules: he was just so powerful that he thought they didn't apply to him. We saw how that ended. He pushed a group of Parahumans into a corner, and they had to kill him to survive, so they did. Let's not be so quick to blame the Undersiders for the actions of a rage-dragon and the mad bomber tinker who worked for him. It's not their fault that Lung was a monster.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX

Replied On May 29th 2011:

But if they knew Lung was a monster who would never stop hunting them, why'd they rob him in the first place? Seems pretty dumb to me.

►14Words

Replied On May 29th 2011:

Sister_Eye: Fuckin'-A. It ain't their fault Lung was a degenerate subhuman. The real problem is the immigration policies that let Lung and his ABB come here in the first place. We knew they'd never really assimilate. People who come from outside Western Civilization will never really be part of it. It's not in their cultural DNA, no matter how long they live here. They can do the ethnic replacement of white people all they want, but they'll never really be us.

Xx_VoidCowboy_xX: Did you see Kaiser's speech? He doesn't blame the Undersiders either.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX

Replied On May 29th 2011:

SisterEye: Wow. How does it feel to have a Nazi agreeing with you?

►14Words

Replied On May 29th 2011:

Xx_VoidCowboy_xX:

Not a Nazi, idiot. The German National Socialist party hasn't existed since 1945. And those people were radical leftists, anyway. They even had "socialist" in their names! I'm an Identitarian.

►Snopes (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On May 29th 2011:

14Words: I'm not sure what's more depressing: the thought that you actually believe what you're saying, or the idea that someone might read your words and take them seriously instead of responding with hysterical laughter.

There were more posts, but I stopped reading there. Kaiser's speech? I put the terms into my search engine and clicked on the first video result. It had over a million views.

The setting was a royal one. A throne of swords upon a dais. Red curtains framed the scene, and behind the throne, the banner of the Empire Eighty Eight was hung proudly beside the American and Christian flags. He stood upon the dais, regal, kingly, a knight in gleaming plate armor, a red cloak flung dramatically over one shoulder, eyes just barely visible through his helmet, which bore a crown of blades. When he spoke, he had the voice of a man accustomed to command. His was a sonorous, rolling baritone, and it was beautiful.

"By now, you are all aware of what has happened to our city, so I won't repeat what we already know. What you may not know is why.

"Part of the blame lies with us. In Japan's hour of need, we opened our doors to her refugees. We took them in, allowed them to live among us, gave them a place to stand and to call their own. In opening the door to them, we opened the door to Lung, who knew neither restraint nor mercy…"

I tried very hard not to sigh as he continued. He went on at length about the barbarity of the ABB, and how it was a symptom of the Asian community's failure to assimilate into our Western Civilization, and I tuned most of it out, only returning my attention to the video when he seemed to be nearing a point.

"...This is why we do not escalate, children," he told the camera. "This is why we have long held to a gentleman's agreement to limit the terms of parahuman engagement, first established in this city by the All-Father and Marquis after their alliance expelled the Teeth from the city and stood strong against the Slaughterhouse Nine. Under this gentleman's agreement, under The Code, parahumans could use their powers in reasonable, limited ways without becoming menaces to society. The tenets were simple: respect the private identities of other Parahumans. Do not target the family members of other Parahumans. Neither violence nor the use of powers is permitted during a meeting between multiple parties. Avoid lethal force. Do not attack civilians. Do not make slaves of people with mind control. Do not engage in rape or sexual assault. Do not escalate beyond what is reasonable.

"Because of the relative peace brought about by the Code, stability was maintained, the criminal element was kept under control, and the city flourished. But in time the Code was broken. By the heroes. Marquis and his empire fell, and the city's economy fell with him. He was then replaced by something worse: Lung and the savage hordes of his Asian Bad Boys, little better than animals, who preyed upon the unfortunate Kyushu refugees, who have barely respected any limits whatever, and who turned our once flourishing docks into a ghetto. Every time the Code has been broken, it has heralded calamity for our city. And now it has been broken again, and the city has paid for it.

"Brockton Bay is a wounded city, and we are a wounded people. Even those of us who were not personally affected by the bombings know someone who was. Even our would-be protectors in the Protectorate and the PRT have suffered loss. I grieve with them, but that does not erase the fact that they have failed in their responsibility to protect us. Preventing this sort of tragedy is the only reason they exist, and they have failed. So be it. If the Protectorate cannot protect this city, the Empire will.

"All of you can be part of that effort. The Empire has the resources to deal with parahuman crime anywhere in the city, but we don't have eyes and ears everywhere we might be needed. Therefore, to help keep us all safe and to help bring the parahuman element back under control, I am creating a kind of neighborhood watch. If you want to have a hand in restoring order and sanity to our community, I urge you to come to our meeting tomorrow at six o'clock pm at the Liberty Community Center on Main Street in downtown Brockton Bay. We must secure the existence of our people and a future for our children." He placed a slight emphasis on the word, 'our'. "Together, we can.

"To the parahuman criminals who would continue this senseless escalation towards greater and greater violence in our streets: I give you this one warning. Abide by the rules or be crushed. To the agents of chaos who would reduce our city to a warzone: we are coming for you. To the PRT, the Protectorate, and the police: you have not had an easy job, and you have failed at it, but take heart; the Empire is here to help.

"To the rest of you, to the good, decent, hard-working folk of this city: You are not abandoned. You are not forsaken. Together, we can and will reclaim the glory and prosperity that we've lost to time, to treason, and to degeneracy. We can and will return to a better way of life. God bless you all, and may God bless Brockton Bay."

The video ended, and I stared at the screen for a few moments before letting out a long, slow exhalation.

There was a moment when I was certain I must have come back to the wrong Brockton Bay. My city wasn't like this. My city wasn't traumatized by a dead tinker's revenge, didn't have a Nazi gang rapidly gaining legitimacy in the public's eye, and wasn't just a hair's breadth short of martial law. My Brockton Bay wasn't like this. My Brockton Bay was a more ordinary kind of miserable; the kind where old friends betrayed you and became your bully, where nothing you did mattered or changed anything, where the heroes and the villains went about their business day after day, and the status quo was God. In that moment, I was certain that I could travel to the correct Brockton Bay, the Brockton Bay that hadn't suffered because of my revenge, with just a jump to the left and shifting a few things around.

It was more than just an idle thought. Something in me recoiled from what I had come back to. Something in me was offended that events in the universe would play out in a way that wasn't what I had deliberately shaped. Outrage rose up like bile in the back of my throat, and I was halfway through the necessary visualization to shape Shadow before I realized what I was about to do, and my focus fell apart like a handful of Autumn leaves.

What the hell had that been? Since when did I get mad at the universe for *disobeying me*? Was I really going to abandon Earth Bet just because things had happened that were inconvenient to me? Was I really going to abandon Da…

I cut that thought off before it could proceed any further, and the spike of guilt that accompanied it barely shook me at all. You know how people say it's impossible to try not to think about something? It isn't. If I want to not think about Pink Elephants, I won't.

I realized then that I was breathing hard, and my brow was beaded with sweat, and that was odd. I focused on my breathing for a time, meditating in the way Aunt Fiona had taught me, and it helped.

I still had twenty minutes before Lisa would be back. Twenty minutes to use productively.

I spent that time preparing three spells: one for attack, one for defense, one for escape. I hung each upon a summoned image of the Pattern, and I was just finishing up when I heard the sound of a key in the lock of the front door. Lisa came in, and she looked tired.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," she answered.

We made small talk for a few minutes as she settled in, and then she sat down on the couch and gave me a serious look. "Tell me everything."

I did this thing, and afterward, she told me more of what had happened in my absence, and who and what had been hit hardest by Bakuda's revenge. Maybe the full extent of what had happened should have made me despair, but as misfortune piled on top of misfortune, I felt a power upon me. Something fierce burned in the pit of my chest, some resolve beyond what I had known myself capable of.

Fiona would be back from Amber in eight days, and I resolved then and there that I would do everything in my power to have this sorted before then.


	24. 3,8 - Steer Your Way

**To Walk in Shadow**

(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)

by P.H Wise

3.8 - Steer Your Way

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.

* * *

The headquarters for the PRT ENE in Brockton Bay was a building that wasn't sure what it wanted to be. It had the sweeping arches and large windows that said openness and the would-be-welcoming feel of a police station that was trying to move away from looking like a fortress, but it also otherwise had the exposed concrete and stark geometric shapes of Brutalist architecture, and the result was kind of an ugly mismash. More of an ugly mismash than Brutalist buildings normally were, that is. It didn't help that every single one of those windows that were intended to make it look more open and inviting were barred. More than anything else, the building lacked unity with itself. The big dome near the top that housed the Wards didn't help with that, providing yet another stark contrast with both of the warring architectural styles of the building below it.

In history class, Mr. Gladly had told us that it was the work of a Cape-Architect who called himself Angular. He'd designed a bunch of big buildings in Brockton Bay in the late 80's that pretty much everyone hated. Almost all the other buildings had been torn down and replaced with more generic skyscrapers before the guy died fighting Leviathan in Newfoundland, and then everyone decided that tearing down his buildings was in bad taste.

The PRT headquarters wasn't the sort of place I would normally go. Yes, I still had the notion of being a hero back then, and I supposed that I'd need to register myself as an independent hero at some point, but after everything that had happened with Lung and the ABB, I wasn't so sure it was a good idea anymore. Didn't stop me from going, but it gave me a lot more anxiety when I went. Looking back on it now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see how foolish I was; the multiverse has complexity beyond what can be contained in a child's dream of heroism. But I didn't see that then, even after everything.

I approached the doors a few minutes before noon in full costume, and the guards took note. There were four guards in armor visible at the entrance. Likely more where I couldn't see them but they could see me. Sniper on overwatch, maybe. More guards inside.

One of the guards made a signal for me to stop, and I did this thing. "The building is closed to the public," he said. His voice was gruff and commanding.

"I'm expected," I replied. "Twelve o'clock, under Felicia. I'm here to register as an independent hero."

The guard spoke into his radio, and a response came back a moment later. He lowered his hand, nodded, and opened the door.

I went in.

The lobby was a mess. A small crater had been blasted in the tile near the entrance to the gift shop; the shockwave had shattered the gift shop's glass doors and sent Protectorate and Wards themed merchandise every which way, and a sole janitor was half-heartedly trying to clean it up. A large, opaque plastic barrier would have closed a section of the floor near the elevators off from easy viewing, but the entrance flap stood open; through that open flap, I saw a figure in blue armor - Armsmaster? - examining a series of high tech instruments in front of a group of tourists frozen in mid-step. A severed hand floated in the air just short of the equipment the armored man was examining.

Vista was one of the frozen people. She was smiling, her costume was spotless, and there was no sign that she had even the slightest inkling of what had happened to her. She was just... stuck in mid-motion, like a fly trapped in amber.

I brought up my Pattern sight and examined the forces at work until a guard closed the flap and told me, "Move along, miss."

* * *

Miss Militia seemed tired. Or maybe tired wasn't the word. Maybe exhausted was better? Whatever the word was, she wasn't at a hundred percent, and if she was doing intake for a new independent hero in such a state, I could only imagine the condition of everyone else who might have been available. Even so, she didn't make apologies or excuses; she came in and got down to business.

"Felicia, right?"

I nodded. "That's right."

She looked me over, her eyes pausing on my weaponry but not remaining there. There was a shimmer on her hip as her power took the form of a pistol. "You're here to register as an independent hero?" she asked.

I nodded. "I downloaded the paperwork already," I said, and produced the ten page form.

I couldn't tell if she smiled or not behind her American flag scarf, but something in her body language eased as she took the pages from me and began to examine them. "That makes things easier," she said.

I'd been shown past the security check point, down a hall, and into a conference room for the meeting, and it would have seemed like a nice, open space if not for the bars on the windows. The shadows cast by those bars meant my face was only partly in sunlight.

"How old are you, Felicia?"

"Eighteen," I replied, and I looked the part: the Shadows lied for me. Not much, not an actual change in shape, just a Seeming, a working of light overlaid atop my real body, but it was enough for now. I was actually only fifteen. Well. Technically, I was really sixteen, but that was only because I was about three weeks older than the rest of Earth Bet on account of time flowing at different rates in different Shadows.

"You might want to reconsider carrying that pistol," she said, gesturing to the Ares Predator holstered at my hip. "Open carry might be legal in this state, but in the Cape scene, it's usually taken as a statement of your willingness to use lethal force."

"It's for dealing with Brutes," I said. "And I don't have a concealed carry permit."

"An anti-Brute pistol?" she asked.

I nodded.

"May I?"

I drew the weapon and handed it to her. She studied it for a minute or two, and I waited while she did. It wasn't loaded and the safety was engaged, and she took note. "Custom grip," she murmured, "Gas venting." She put the weapon on the table and then drew her own, which her power had turned into a copy of mine. She popped out the magazine. "Caseless ammunition..." She turned the weapon over. "Ares Macrotechnology? That isn't a gun manufacturer I've heard of." There was a strange expression on her face that even the scarf covering it couldn't hide. "Is this Tinker-made?"

"Not exactly."

Miss Militia replaced her gun in her holster, and I did the same with mine. We moved on. "It says here your power is that you're... lucky?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Very lucky," I said.

"I can't take that at face value," she said. "Luck is one of the more common superpowers claimed by frauds and con men."

"Probability alteration," I said. "What's possible can be made probable. What's probable can be made likely."

"You do it intentionally?"

I nodded.

"But not perfectly," she surmised.

"Nothing's perfect," I replied. "If something's just too improbable, even if I put a lot of effort in, it might still happen, and I can't make impossible things. happen. And the more complicated things get, the more variables there are, the harder it is to get a definite outcome."

"Oh?"

"I was recently in a parallel universe," I said.

"You can travel to parallel universes?" Miss Militia asked.

"It's a long story. But in this alternate Brockton Bay, it was about June 13th. The city had just been hit by both Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine, one after another."

I had her complete and undivided attention.

"One of the things I've been doing since I came back was trying to make those two events less likely. I've made some progress. I've definitely delayed them, but I can't guarantee that those things won't happen in this universe."

"Do you have proof of what you're saying?"

"I have the names of the dead from their Endbringer memorial," I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "You what?"

"Thirty-five capes died defending that other world's version of Brockton Bay. Do you want their names?"

When she didn't say anything, I wrote down the first name on a blank piece of paper.

Aegis / Carlos Martinez

"Stop," she said, and her voice was like a whip-crack; her eyes had gone cold and deadly.

I stopped.

Miss Militia drew in a deep breath. "You know it's a federal crime to unmask a Ward, don't you?"

"I haven't unmasked anyone," I replied. "All I did was write down the names of the dead. It was all carved in stone on the Endbringer memorial of that other Brockton Bay. I'm not here to make threats. I'm warning you about this because there's still a chance that the same thing might happen here, and I don't want us to have to live through that nightmare."

She considered that for a while. "My superiors will have to make the decision," she said at last. "This is above my paygrade." Then she stood up and exited the room. The door shut with a soft click, and I waited. Two minutes later, she came back in. "The Director would like to speak to you about what happens next. We're going to have a new room set up for this purpose in about an hour."

I didn't have anything else planned for this afternoon, so an hour wait was fine, if annoying. "In the meantime," I said, "can we finish the registration? I want to get this out of the way."

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow, thought about it, and then shrugged. "Sure," she said, and together we took the fight to that dread beast known as paperwork.

An hour later, with the necessary paperwork now signed, dotted, and crossed, I was led out, down the hall, up a level, through two security checkpoints, and into a conference room seemingly identical to the first.

They were both there waiting for me, and I immediately wondered why. They could have made me wait to demonstrate power over me. Were they taking this seriously enough not to want to play games like that? Or maybe they weren't really here, and wanted to hide the fact that they were actually being projected into the room from the Rig in the bay via tinker-tech hologram? That's probably how I would handle a first meeting with an unknown cape. Give the impression of trust without actually being vulnerable. Though that might lead to problems if the ruse was exposed, so maybe not? Whatever. I wasn't going to speculate all day, and I never did confirm it one way or another, I just figured they were unlikely to actually risk their leadership like that.

But they were both there: Director Emily Piggot of the PRT ENE and Armsmaster, leader of the local Protectorate branch. Armsmaster's appearance was immediately iconic: he stood tall in his midnight blue, silver-accented power armor. His eyes and nose were covered by his helmet's visor, but his face was left exposed his dark beard was nearly trimmed, and everything about his body language told you he was in charge. Piggot, on the other hand, was seated, and unimpressive at first glance. She was an overweight woman in a navy blue jacket and skirt. Her hair was a shade of blonde that probably came from a bottle, and it was cut in a really unflattering short bob, and her skin had an unhealthy palor, but her eyes… her eyes were the eyes of a bird of prey: hard, flat, the color of steel, and when you looked into them, you couldn't help but think she was deciding if you were worth the effort to hunt.

Neither of them moved to greet me as I entered, but they nodded to Miss Militia, who shut the door behind me. Two PRT troopers in full armor stood on either side of the door, and one of them directed me to the chair at the table opposite Piggot and Armsmaster.

"Have a seat," Piggot said with the voice of one who expected obedience. I immediately wanted to refuse, but that would notch this meeting even more towards adversarial than it already was, and that wouldn't get me what I wanted.

I sat down. Armsmaster didn't.

Piggot continued to regard me, and after she had allowed the silence to stretch just long enough that I was inclined to break it, she said, "Well, Felicia. I understand you've come into possession of some highly sensitive information. What am I to do with you?" Her question wasn't phrased like a question.

I could have responded in a dozen different ways, and I wanted to respond in one way in particular - just because Fiona had taught me greater discipline and self-control didn't mean I wasn't still a teenager - but I knew better. "Listen to what I have to say," I suggested, "take it seriously, and when I've told you everything I came to tell you, let me go."

"I'll take that under advisement," she said, and I honestly couldn't tell if that was deadpan or if she was just completely unimpressed.

"Registering as an independent hero is only half the reason I came here today," I said. "The other half was to give you a warning."

"What kind of a warning?" Armsmaster asked.

I told them. Not everything, but enough. I told them about the alternate future Brockton Bay where Leviathan had attacked, and the Slaughterhouse Nine had come soon after, of a city in ruins only two weeks in the future, and the disease Bonesaw had unleashed and which Panacea had cured. They took it pretty well, all things considered.

"That's the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever heard," Piggot said. "You honestly expect me to believe that the reason you know the civilian identity of one of my Wards is because you saw it on an Endbringer memorial in another universe?"

"I do," I said. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, but I didn't otherwise react.

"Do you have the civilian names of everyone who died?" Armsmaster asked.

I shook my head. "Not every cape's civilian name was on the memorial. I only have the names that were written there. Do you want me to start with the names of the Protectorate's dead, or should I begin with the Empire Eighty Eight?"

"Start with the Protectorate," Armsmaster said.

"Carlos Martinez. Dean Stansfield. Robin Swoyer."

Director Piggot's face seemed carved from stone, but Armsmaster looked thoughtful. "Three out of twelve isn't bad," he mused. "That's better than average for an Endbringer fight."

"What do you expect us to do with this information?" Piggot asked even as she side-eyed Armsmaster.

"Whatever you want," I said. "Ignore it. Dismiss it. Take it seriously. Report it to your bosses. Do everything you can to prevent it. I've been doing everything I can to make Leviathan's attack less likely to hit here. I hope I succeeded, but if I didn't, the rest is up to you. Do you want the full list of names?"

Piggot and Armsmaster exchanged a look. Then Armsmaster said, "It's not as if we don't already know the identities of most Parahumans. Anonymity hasn't really existed since the beginning of the Information Age."

My eyes narrowed. They knew who everyone was? Why hadn't they acted on that knowledge? An answer came to me almost immediately, spoken in my thoughts in Mom's voice from memories of long ago: "the Protectorate and the PRT, like the police, serve the interests of the ruling class. It isn't about justice: it's about preserving the status quo." I immediately despised that answer, and I fervently hoped it wasn't true even as some bitter, disappointed part of my soul that I recognized as my worse if wiser self told me that it was. "If you already know, why haven't you arrested all the villains?" I asked.

"There's a difference between what we know and what we can prove in court," Piggot replied.

I had a sense that she wasn't giving the full answer, but it was an angle I hadn't considered. "Okay," I said. "You want the list, then?"

"Yes," Armsmaster said.

I produced a piece of paper and a pen and wrote all thirty five names from memory. When I was done, Piggot took it, read it, and then passed it to Armsmaster.

"Well, Felicia," Piggot said. "There's very few ways a situation like this can go, with a cape's civilian identity at stake. Multiple capes. And while I honestly don't care that you know the identities of several villains, knowing the identities of two of my Wards and one member of the Protectorate is a problem."

"Okay," I said. "How do we resolve this?"

"The best option is you joining the Protectorate," Armsmaster said. "You would earn a paycheck, you'd have a career-"

"No," I said. "I've registered as an independent hero. I'm willing to help from time to time, but I won't work for you."

"Option two is that you unmask to Velocity, Aegis, and Gallant," Armsmaster said.

"Don't you already know who I am?" I asked. "Like you said: anonymity hasn't really existed since the beginning of the Information Age, right?"

Armsmaster looked annoyed, and I had to suppress the urge to smile.

"Option three," I said, "is that you trust me. I'm one of the good guys, and I'm not interested in putting heroes in danger."

Both of them looked at me as though I had just sprouted a third eye.

I sighed. "I could sign a non-disclosure agreement?"

That was more of a suggestion they could live with. As we went over what might be in such an agreement, my thoughts drifted back to the sight of Vista and those tourists, seemingly frozen in time, down in the building's lobby.

I told myself that what happened to her, what happened to the whole city with Bakuda's bombs, wasn't my fault. I told myself that what she had done, all the people she'd killed delivering her posthumous fuck you to the world were nobody's fault but hers.

It didn't help. No matter what the truth might have been, it felt like it was my fault. I was the one who had killed her with a boot to the head. And those men at that… Farm. And Lung. And maybe an entire world. And…

Guilt hung like a weight from the bottom of my sternum, a heavy, acidic sort of sensation that bubbled up into my thoughts, and I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, Armsmaster and Director Piggot had stopped talking.

"There's… one more thing," I said.

They waited.

"I noticed your frozen Ward on my way up. I might be able to help. Maybe."

Director Piggot's eyes narrowed. "How?" she asked.

I spread my hands. "With luck."

Armsmaster gave me a look of pure loathing, as if I had personally offended him. "Get out," he said.

"I'm not joking," I said.

"I know you aren't. That just makes it worse."

"I really can help," I said.

Piggot sighed. "Fine," she said. Armsmaster side-eyed her, and she ignored him. "Go down to the lobby and see what you can do. We'll have the NDAs ready for your signature before you leave."

I went.

Below, I activated my Pattern Sight and took a longer and closer look at the forces at work in the frozen area. Looking at it now, like this, it seemed to me as though the frozen area was somehow stagnant. Shadow stuff, reality, the universe, somehow moved around the frozen area instead of through it, and yet the region of stagnant Shadow was still moving with the planet, if that makes sense. Everything inside the area had stopped, but the area itself had not, and carried its contents with it. It was weird. The more I sank my awareness into it, the weirder it seemed: and not just the frozen area, but everything else as well, and…

 _Shadow_

All at once, I felt like a girl standing on a precipice above an infinite abyss. I was certain that if I took another step forward, I would be unmade. Not once in the month I had spent training with Aunt Fiona had it ever occurred to me that _time itself_ could be a function of Shadow.

I mentally took hold of the stuff of Shadow within the stagnant region and gave it an experimental push, and it resisted me. It… flexed in a way analogous to a spring building tension against the force exerted on it.

Things I had known but not realized the implications of suddenly fell into place. Time was relative. Time flows at different rates in different universes. But time could also flow at different rates within the same universe. That was… wasn't that Relativity? It had something to do with gravity, didn't it? Further implications unfolded.

My pulse quickened, and I felt the familiar ghostly touch of fear. Time. Time was Shadow. But… did people, did consciousness even meaningfully exist outside of time? And there had been Time in Amber, hadn't there? At least, events had seemed to follow one after another, and proceeded from the present into the past with new events falling from the future into the present, hadn't they?

My thoughts went to The Pattern. I remembered… I anticipated? I still was? An act of will. An act of striving against resistance. Even here, whatever here was, that experience felt infinitely more real than the universe, felt like it hadn't ended, felt like it never would, and I suddenly understood why solipsism came to me so easily.

Before, I'd thought that maybe I could manipulate probability to unfreeze Vista and the tourists, but now that I'd had a good look at the area of stagnant Shadow I could see that wasn't going to work. But new solutions suggested themselves. These solutions weren't derived from basic shadow navigation, but with the more advanced form thereof that was spellwork and magical operations.

I could fix this. I'd just need to do it in a way that made it look consistent with probability manipulation. And without a spell prepared ahead of time, I'd have to do it the long way. I extended a line of magical force into the region of stagnant Shadow.

Movement. Someone approaching. Slowing. Stopping a few feet short. I looked up. A brown haired boy in red and gold armor. I recognized him as Kid Win: one of the Wards. Once upon a time, I'd have been thrilled by the thought of meeting a local superhero. Now, though? Now, it was just one more thing. Everything was ruined, people were dead, the Nazis were halfway to convincing the city they were the good guys, and it was my fault. … Bakuda's fault. It felt like my fault.

I returned my focus to my task. My magical projection oozed through the stagnant region with the speed of flowing molasses.

"What are you doing?" Kid Win asked.

I gave him a version of the truth. "I'm saturating the frozen area with my power," I said. "There exists the possibility of the effect collapsing. It isn't very probable, but it exists. If I was able to find it, I could nudge things just so..."

"Do you mind if I watch?" he asked.

I looked his way. "Why?"

He didn't meet my gaze. "I…" There was a familiar shadow in those eyes that wouldn't lift to meet mine, and it took me a moment to recognize it as guilt.

"Go ahead," I said.

"Thanks."

Time passed. Or. Well. Honestly, I'm still not sure if time actually passes, but you know what I mean. After maybe ten minutes of this, Kid Win asked: "So you're trying to adjust something improbable into being a sure thing?"

I nodded. "It's tricky. The frozen area becoming decoupled from Earth's movement is actually more likely than the effect spontaneously collapsing." Which was true. The real problem, though, was that while I could easily shift Shadow to achieve the effect I wanted, it wouldn't actually free this particular version of Vista and the tourists. Maybe nobody else in the universe except Alec would be able to tell the difference, but I would know. "But just because something is one way doesn't mean it can't be another. You could fall through the floor. Every atom of that piece of tile could move in a different direction instead of sticking together the way they are. It's just so unlikely that it might as well be impossible."

Kid Win's brow furrowed. "Are you… are you talking about manipulating quantum probability?"

I didn't answer him. Instead, I maneuvered a second line of magical force into the field, and as I worked, the temperature of the room began to drop. It was a slow thing, a gradual decrease that took almost an hour to become noticeable, and through it all, Kid Win and the PRT guards watched; Kid Win occasionally produced some new scanner to try to detect what I was doing, but otherwise he didn't interfere.

Condensation began to form on the surface of the area of stopped time, slowly dripping down from it onto the floor. My ears popped as if from pressure differential, and I could smell something like ozone. Then, near the end of the second hour, the condensation froze solid. It hadn't altered anything inside the sphere, just its surface, but standing next to it felt like standing next to an air conditioner at full blast. I made a few more adjustments to the spell matrix, allowing it to settle into its finalized shape, and then…

And then the normal fabric of Shadow flowed into the stagnant space, guided by my spell, and sort of, metaphorically equalized the pressure between the inside of the sphere and the rest of the universe. There was a crack, and then, inside the sphere, Vista staggered. Then the civilians staggered, and they looked up and saw the ice shell that had grown up around them, and the plastic sheets beyond that, and their eyes widened.

Kid Win had grown bored during the second hour and, after leaving a few scanners active and pointed at me, had started working on something at a table just outside the quarantine area, but he looked up at the sound of the crack.

"What… just happened?" Vista asked, and her voice was strangely distorted by the ice.

I let out a slow sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from my brow.

"Vista?" Kid Win asked.

"Kid Win?" Vista's eyes were very wide now. "Where did this ice come from? When did you get down here? You asked me to do the tour so you could finish your project, didn't you?"

Kid Win's cheeks flushed red, and he shook his head. "Vista, that was…" he trailed off, then started again. "You've been stuck in there for a long time," he said. Then he turned, walked over to me, and hugged me like his life depended on it, and I was so surprised by sudden affectionate contact with a boy my own age that all I could really do was flail awkwardly as I tried not to panic.

"Thank you," he said over and over. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Now it was my turn to blush. "Don't mention it," I said, and I really wished he wouldn't.

"Get us out of here!" one of the civilians inside the hollow ice-sphere yelled, panic growing in his voice.

"It's okay," Kid Win said. "Armsmaster is on his way."

I didn't stick around to see what happened next. The receptionist had a beaming smile on his face when he handed me a clipboard, pen, and an NDA. I read it - every word of it - crossed out two provisions that I wasn't going to agree to, and then signed my cape name. And when I departed the PRT headquarters, despite the existential terror I was still doing my best to ignore and pretend I wasn't feeling plus my uncertainty that I had actually freed those people in a way that was consistent with probability alteration, there was a lightness in my step that hadn't been there before. Things weren't better, but they were moving in that direction. If I could steer my way through the wreckage my revenge had left behind, they'd get there.

I just needed to build up a little more momentum.


End file.
